Dear and incomparable
Is that love to me
Flowing out of the woodlands,
Out of the sea;
Out of the firmament breathing
Between pasture and sky,
For no reward is cherished here
To reckon by.
It is not of my earning,
Nor forfeit I can
This love that flows upon
The poverty of man,
Though faithless and unkind
I sleep and forget
This love that asks no wage of me
Waits my waking yet.
Of such is the love, dear,
That you fold me in,
It knows no governance
Of virtue or sin;
From nothing of my achieving
Shall it enrichment take,
And the glooms of my unworthiness
It will not forsake.
A SABBATH DAY
IN FIVE WATCHES
I. MORNING
(TO M. C.)
You were three men and women two,
And well I loved you, all of you,
And well we kept the Sabbath day.
The bells called out of Malvern town,
But never bell could call us down
As we went up the hill away.
Was it a thousand years ago
Or yesterday that men were so
Zealous of creed and argument?
Here wind is brother to the rain,
And the hills laugh upon the plain,
And the old brain-gotten feuds are spent.
Bring lusty laughter, lusty jest,
Bring each the song he names the best,
Bring eager thought and speech that’s keen,
Tell each his tale and tell it out,
The only shame be prudent doubt,
Bring bodies where the lust is clean.