How piteous strange is love! The walks
By wooded ways; the silent talks
Beneath the broad and fragrant bough.
The dark deep wood, the dense black dell,
Where scarce a single gold beam fell
From out the sun.
They rested now
On mossy trunk. They wandered then
Where never fell the feet of men.
Then longer walks, then deeper woods,
Then sweeter talks, sufficient sweet,
In denser, deeper solitudes,—
Dear careless ways for careless feet;
Sweet talks of paradise for two,
And only two, to watch or woo.
She rarely spake. All seemed a dream
She would not waken from. She lay
All night but waiting for the day,
When she might see his face, and deem
This man, with all his perils passed,
Had found the Lotus-land at last.
XXV.
The year waxed fervid, and the sun
Fell central down. The forest lay
A-quiver in the heat. The sea
Below the steep bank seemed to run
A molten sea of gold.
Away
Against the gray and rock-built isles
That broke the molten watery miles
Where lonesome sea-cows called all day,
The sudden sun smote angrily.
Therefore the need of deeper deeps,
Of denser shade for man and maid,
Of higher heights, of cooler steeps,
Where all day long the sea-wind stayed.
They sought the rock-reared steep. The breeze
Swept twenty thousand miles of seas;
Had twenty thousand things to say
Of love, of lovers of Cathay,
To lovers ’mid these high-held trees.
XXVI.
To left, to right, below the height,
Below the wood by wave and stream,
Plumed pampas grasses grew to gleam
And bend their lordly plumes, and run
And shake, as if in very fright
Before sharp lances of the sun.
They saw the tide-bound battered ship
Creep close below against the bank;
They saw it cringe and shrink; it shrank
As shrinks some huge black beast with fear
When some uncommon dread is near.
They heard the melting resin drip,
As drip the last brave blood-drops when
Life’s battle waxes hot with men.