XXXV.
O rarest interchange of truth and lies,
Love, ever pandering to thine own deceit!
Thou sweet chameleon of a thousand dyes!
Truth still is varying with thy wayward heat;
Truth long ago has banish’d thee his court,
Yet by thy essence Truth thou still must be;
Though different winds waft to a changeful port,
If Truth be gone, then it departs with thee;
Lo! thou art Truth, and Truth developed lies
In Love, whose home is Beauty, and the world,
And the quick sympathy of unfathomed eyes,
And maddening forms out of their orbits hurl’d;
And all are drunken for a little space,
Then drink disgust, quite sickened of the chase.
XXXVI.
Love takes its impress from the formless hues
That signify the thing they yet conceal;
Love leads that heart to life, which it endues
With joys that aggravate the harm they heal;
Love’s treasures are not priceless to all eyes,
All may not learn what their full magic means:
By various grades of hopes, and fears, and sighs,
And ecstacies, and woes, raptures, and dreams,
The soul of man ascends to that it loves,
And is developed into something more;
In a more rich creation now it moves,
And seeks in other souls a priceless ore:
Something it finds, yet loses what it lacks,
So must the conqueror in the town he sacks.
XXXVII.
Love gain’d is love unlovely, joy ne’er seeth’d
But in desire, still with possession cloy’d;
If that the vows whose once perfection breath’d,
Could hide with words the margin of their void,
Then Love were hope, fulfilment, peace, combined,
Into a concord of unearthly bliss;
Then were the roses of enjoyment twined
Around the satire on young Love’s first kiss:
But Love says, no, and Nature too denies;
For Rapture rises but by woe’s decline:
And too much bliss, with a brief respite, dies
By coldness, that shall make love dimlier shine.
All love betrays man past its paltry base,
He mounts his bubble, soars, and falls apace.