XI.
A FEW of us who faltered as we fared
Love has returned for. Still he leads us on,
But where we walk the furrows are prepared
And sown and fruitful, and the sowers are gone.
O love, O love, the way too easy lies!
Life on the rough horizon yonder goes,
And when I call he will not turn his eyes,
But with my brothers sows, and reaps, and sows.
Life without love, O bitter, bitterest birth!
Love without life still leaves us in our need.
Ah, love, give up to me my patch of earth,
My pinch of seed! Hast neither earth nor seed?
Then whence these visions of thy presence born,
These shining visions of flowers and fruit and corn?
XII.
I HEAR love answer: Since within the mesh
Of blood and flesh you labour for awhile,
I, even I, must use you in the flesh,
Leavening it of all the world calls vile.
I am not nature’s force. O, she will forge
Her indomitable end without my aid,
And men cry out on her with rising gorge
As though they were of other forces made.
Not being her bond-slave, I alone can give
Visions that are unmingled with her earth,
But since this present in her habit you live
I must meet nature to fulfil their birth.
Only when you and I come clear of the clay,
Beloved, I will fulfil them as I may.
XIII.
THY glance is lovelier than the glance of the moon,
Thy breath more heavenly than the breath of may,
When thou dost gaze my sight begins to swoon,
When thou dost breathe my own breath swims away.
O love, with strange clear light, with strange dim breath,
Thou dost pervade me, till all strength, all sense,
Dissolve, it may be as they will when death
Looses the soul from the body’s impotence.