LXXXV.
O think not I would purchase, measuring out,
The priceless merit of the love I’ve sued!
Thy love’s the larger, that it will not doubt
To rest its hope on buds whose beauty’s crude:
Yet suffer, that my shafts attempt the mark
Which thy heart shows to be true virtue’s goal;
Suffer, that, by thy conduct, my poor bark
May proudly sail, and scorn the obtrusive shoal:
My service slights all guerdons, and all gains,
Than but one smile, one word, one thought of thine;
Happy, whoe’er approves not, if my pains
Be crown’d by thee, and through thy merit shine.
What others’ emulous worth labours to gain,
O glorious prize! ’tis mine, perchance, to attain.
LXXXVI.
Love is the larger when it seeks return,
Only in the fulness of its treasur’d self;
When it can linger by the shattered urn,
Its idol gone, it knows not where, nor whence;
When what we worship, may not mark the woes
Which wear the frame, but fortify the mind;
When all is dark, nor earth, nor Heaven shows
Acceptance gleaming, through the midnight, kind:
This love’s of purer strain than men can know,
Most jar the chords, but toying with the harp,
They’d lower to life, and filter through fresh woe
The essence that should illustrate their dark.
Grief’s scale shows heights, to which whoe’er attain,
Shall haply find the joy outweigh the pain.
LXXXVII.
But, life compounds the dregs to luscious draughts;
And various pleasure mocks monotonous woe;
And all the wheels and hinges show their crafts,
Leaving no room for the full spirit’s flow;
Even love forbids the soul, for human loss,
To wear less brightly, its heaven-tinctur’d fire,
And shows it lovelier, to exalt the cross
Into the pledge of love, still struggling higher:
Only the eternal breath of Nature’s beauty
Demands the unchanged devotion of our years.
Immortal constancy of shifting duty
Crowns the rich harvest of our sometime tears:
What’s spent in loving, richly is defrayed,
Though nought’s returned, by lending we are paid.