This is that water from the Fount of Gold
Water of Youth and washer out of cares
Which Raymond of Saragossa sought of old
And finding in the mountain, unawares,
Returned to hear an ancient story told
To Bramimond, his love, beside the marble stairs.
VI
Youth gave you to me, but I’ll not believe
That Youth will, taking his quick self, take you.
Youth’s all our Truth: he cannot so deceive.
He has our graces, not our ownselves too.
He still compares with time when he’ll be spent,
By human doom enhancing what we are;
Enriches us with rare experiment,
Lends arms to leagured Age in Time’s rough war.
Look! This Youth in us is an Old Man taking
A Boy to make him wiser than his days.
So is our old Youth our young Age’s making:
So rich in time our final debt he pays.
Then with your quite young arms do you me hold
And I will still be young when all the World’s grown old.
VII
Mortality is but the Stuff you wear
To show the better on the imperfect sight.
Your home is surely with the changeless light
Of which you are the daughter and the heir.
For as you pass, the natural life of things
Proclaims the Resurrection: as you pass
Remembered summer shines across the grass
And somewhat in me of the immortal sings.
You were not made for memory, you are not
Youth’s accident I think but heavenly more;
Moulding to meaning slips my pen’s poor blot
And opening wide that long forbidden door
Where stands the Mother of God, your exemplar.
How beautiful, how beautiful you are!
VIII
Not for the luckless buds our roots may bear
Now all in bloom, now seared and cankered lying
Will I entreat you, lest they should compare
Foredoomed humanity with the fall of flowers.
Hold thou with me the chaste communion rare
And touch with life this mortal case of ours:
You’re lifted up beyond the power of dying:
I die, as bounded things die everywhere.
You’re voiced companionship, I’m silence lonely;
You’re stuff, I’m void; you’re living, I’m decay.
I fall, I think, to-night and ending only;
You rise, I know, through still advancing day.
And knowing living gift were life for me
In narrow room of rhyme I fixed it certainly.