The frost may form apace,
The roses pine away:
Nomæa! if I see thy face,
Then is the summer day.
A word of thine, a breath,
And lo! my joy shall seem
To peer far down where life and death
Stir like a forded stream;
Or else shall misery sound
And travel in that hour
All utmost things in their shut round,
As a bee feels his flower.
Thought lags and cries Alas,
Love ranges quick and free.
Oh, figured clock and sanded glass,
They mark no term for me.
And since I can but rue
The calendar gone wrong,
And dials never telling true
If dreams be short or long,
Dear, from these arts that fail
To thee I will repair.
Till the last eve dance down the gale
With no star in her hair,
Be thou my solar chime,
Be thou my wheel of night,
Be thy bright heart, not ashen Time,
My measure, law, and light.
[His Angel to his Mother]
What would you do for your fairest one,
Wild as the wind and free as the sun,
Born a fugitive, sure to slip
Soon from secular ownership?
Men in search of the heart's desire,
Wearily trampling flood and fire,
Rove betimes into some abyss
Darker far than eternity's.
(Ah, the hazard! it awes one so!)
And shall it be thus with the boy, or no?
Sweet, if you love him, let him go.
Happy the Frontier to have gained
Undetaining and undetained,
Quick and clean, like a solar ray
Shot through spindrift across the bay!
Men would follow a long vain quest,
Feed on ashes and forfeit rest,
Bleed with battle and flag with toil,
Only to stifle in desert soil.
(Ah, the failure! it stings one so!)
And shall it be thus with the boy, or no?
Sweet, if you love him, let him go.
Vats fill up, and the sheaves are in:
Never a blessing is left to win
Save for the myrtle coronal
Round the urn at the end of all.
Men will clutch, as they clutched of old,
Souring honey or dimming gold,
Not the treasure-trove of the land
Here shut fast in a roseleaf hand.
(Ah, the folly! it irks one so!)
And shall it be thus with the boy, or no?
Sweet, if you love him, let him go.
[Autumn Magic]
Soon as divine September, flushing from sea to sea,
Peers from the whole wide upland into eternity,
Soft as an exhalation, ghosts of the thistle start:
Never a poet saw them but ached in his baffled heart.
Gossamer armies rising thicker than snowflakes fall,
Waken in blood and marrow, aware of the unheard call.
Oh, what a nameless urging through avenues laid in air,
Hints of escape, unbodied, intricate, everywhere,
Sense of a feared denial, or access hard to be won;
Gleams of a dubious gesture for guesses to feed upon!
Flame goes flying in heaven, the down on the cool hillside:
Earth is a bride-veil glory to show and conceal the Bride.