Will love delay, will love delay till death
Hath sealed these lips and locked these eyes in night?
Till unto love and hate indifferent quite
This form shall lie? Then wilt thou, wild of breath,
Bend down and kiss me there
When I no more shall care?
II
If thou wouldst know the Beautiful that breathes
And beckons through the World, far must thou seek!...
She is no shadow wreathed with hemlock wreaths;
No drowsy sorrow whose wan eyes are weak
With melancholy vigils; and no shade
Of tragic sin of the sweet sun afraid:
No tearful anger torn of truthless love,
Who stabs her sick heart to the dagger’s hilt
For vengeance sweet; no miser mood, or maid,
In owlet towers!—Nay! she sings above
On morning meads ’mid flowers that never wilt.
If thou dost seek the Beautiful, beware!
Lest thou discover her, nor know ’tis she;
And she enslave thee to thy heart’s despair,
And fill thy soul with yearning, utterly,
For that wild-rose which is her mouth, that brings
Dew-odors of the dawn; for those twin springs
Of light, her eyes; the bloom of her white brow,
O’er which the foliage of her dark hair lies:
The melody which is her heart, that sings
The poetry of love, to which all bow,
Both gods and men, the love that never dies.
Lost art thou then, lost as the first lone star
Set in the splendor of the sunset’s wave;
Lost in thy loneliness of searching far,
Striving to clasp her, evermore her slave:
Lost—gladly lost! a devotee to her
Who, in the end, perhaps may let thee share
A portion of her bliss, her heritage
Of happiness in the same way and wise
As woods and waters share it.—Then prepare
Thy soul,—made perfect,—for its final wage,
Her kiss, whose touch shall apotheosize.
III
Now that the orchard’s leaves are sere,
And drip with rain instead of dew,
No moon-bright fruit hangs moon-like here,
And dead your long white lilies too,—
And dead the heart that broke for you:
How comes the dim touch of your arm?
Your faint lips on my feverish cheek?
Your eyes near mine? deep as a charm,
And gray, so gray! till I am weak,
Weak with wild tears and can not speak.
I am as one who walks in dreams;
Sees, as in youth, his father’s home;
Hears from his native mountain streams
Far music of continual foam,
And one sweet voice that bids him come.