If Time’s foot-print from my brow is driven,
Canst thou, too, take with thy subtle powers
The burden of thinking, and let me go drinking
The careless pleasures of youth’s bright hours?
If silver threads from my tresses vanish,
If a glow once more in my pale cheek gleams,
Wilt thou slay duty and give back the beauty
Of days untroubled by aught but dreams?
When the soft fair arms of the siren Summer
Encircle the earth in their languorous fold,
Will vast, deep oceans of sweet emotions
Surge through my veins as they surged of old?
Canst thou bring back from a day long-vanished
The leaping pulse and the boundless aim?
I will pay thee double, for all thy trouble,
If thou wilt restore all these, good dame.
HEAVEN AND HELL
While forced to dwell apart from thy dear face,
Love, robed like sorrow, led me by the hand
And taught my doubting heart to understand
That which has puzzled all the human race.
Full many a sage has questioned where in space
Those counter worlds were? where the mystic strand
That separates them? I have found each land,
And Hell is vast, and Heaven a narrow space.
In the small compass of thy clasping arms,
In reach and sight of thy dear lips and eyes,
There, there for me the joy of Heaven lies.
Outside, lo! chaos, terrors’ wild alarms,
And all the desolation fierce and fell
Of void and aching nothingness, makes Hell.
LOVE’S SUPREMACY
As yon great Sun in his supreme condition
Absorbs small worlds and makes them all his own,
So does my love absorb each vain ambition,
Each outside purpose which my life has known.
Stars cannot shine so near that vast orb’d splendour;
They are content to feed his flames of fire:
And so my heart is satisfied to render
Its strength, its all, to meet thy strong desire.
As in a forest when dead leaves are falling
From all save some perennial green tree,
So one by one I find all pleasures palling
That are not linked with or enjoyed by thee.
And all the homage that the world may proffer,
I take as perfumed oils or incense sweet,
And think of it as one thing more to offer,
And sacrifice to Love, at thy dear feet.
I love myself because thou art my lover,
My name seems dear since uttered by thy voice;
Yet, argus-eyed, I watch and would discover
Each blemish in the object of thy choice.
I coldly sit in judgment on each error,
To my soul’s gaze I hold each fault of me,
Until my pride is lost in abject terror,
Lest I become inadequate to thee.
Like some swift-rushing and sea-seeking river,
Which gathers force the farther on it goes,
So does the current of my love forever
Find added strength and beauty as it flows.
The more I give, the more remains for giving,
The more receive, the more remains to win.
Ah! only in eternities of living
Will life be long enough to love thee in.