Can I forget how Love once led the ways
Of our two lives together, joining them;
How every hour was his anadem,
And every day a tablet in his praise!
Can I forget how, in his garden’s place,
Among the purple roses, stem to stem,
We heard the rumor of his robe’s bright hem,
And saw the aureate radiance of his face!—
Though I beheld my soul’s high dreams down-hurled,
And Falsehood sit where Truth once towered white,
And in Love’s place usurping Lust and Shame,
Though flowers be dead within the winter world,
Are flowers not there? and starless though the night,
Are stars not there, eternal and the same?
MY ROSE
There was a rose in Eden once: it grows
On Earth now, sweeter for its rare perfume:
And Paradise is poorer by one bloom,
And Earth is richer. In this blossom glows
More loveliness than old seraglios
Or courts of kings did ever yet illume:
More purity than ever yet had room
In soul of nun or saint.—O human rose!—
Who art initial and sweet period of
My heart’s divinest sentence; where I read
Love, first and last, and in the pauses, love;
Who art the dear ideal of each deed
Through which my life is strong to attain its goal,—
Set in the mystic garden of my soul!
RESTRAINT
Dear heart and love! what happiness is it
To watch the firelight’s varying shade and shine
On thy young face; and through those eyes of thine—
As through clear windows—to behold them flit,
In sumptuous chambers of thy mind’s chaste wit,
Thy soul’s fair fancies! then to take in mine
Thy hand, whose pressure brims my heart’s divine
Hushed rapture as with music exquisite!
When I remember how thy look and touch
Sway, like the moon, my blood with ecstasy,
I dare not think to what fierce heaven might lead
Thy soft embrace; or in thy kiss how much
Sweet hell,—beyond all help of me,—might be,
Where I were lost, where I were lost indeed!