Changed did I find her, truly, the next day:
Ne'er could I see her as of old again.
That strange mood seemed to draw a cloud away,
And let her beauty pour through every vein
Sunlight and life, part of me. Thus the lover
With each new morn a new world may discover.
VI.
WEDDING-NIGHT.
At night, with shaded eyes, the summer moon
In tender meditation downward glances
At the dark earth, far-set in dim expanses,
And, welcomer than blazoned gold of noon,
Down through the air her steady lights are strewn.
The breezy forests sigh in moonlit trances,
And the full-hearted poet, waking, fancies
The smiling hills will break in laughter soon.
Oh thus, thou gentle Nature, dost thou shine
On me to-night. My very limbs would melt,
Like rugged earth beneath yon ray divine,
Into faint semblance of what they have felt:
Thine eye doth color me, O wife, O mine,
With peace that in thy spirit long hath dwelt!
LOVE'S DEFEAT.
A thousand times I would have hoped,
A thousand times protested;
But still, as through the night I groped,
My torch from me was wrested,
and wrested.
How often with a succoring cup
Unto the hurt I hasted!
The wounded died ere I came up;
My cup was still untasted,—
Untasted.
Of darkness, wounds, and harsh disdain
Endured, I ne'er repented.
'T is not of these I would complain:
With these I were contented,—
Contented.
Here lies the misery, to feel
No work of love completed;
In prayerless passion still to kneel,
And mourn, and cry: "Defeated
Defeated!"