The moon above the darkness shows
An orb of silvery snow and fire,
As if the night would now disclose
To heav’n her one divine desire—
As in the rapture of his kiss
All my glad soul is drawn to his.
The cloud divines not that it glows;
The rose knows nothing of its scent;
Nor knows the moon that it bestows
Light on our earth and firmament—
So is the soul unconscious of
The beauties it reveals through love.
THE GLORY AND THE DREAM
There in the past I see her as of old,
Blue-eyed and hazel-haired, within a room
Dim with a twilight of tenebrious gold;
Her white face sensuous as a delicate bloom
Night opens in the tropics. Fold on fold
Pale laces drape her; and a frail perfume,
As of a moonlit lily brimmed with rain,
Breathes from her presence, drowsing heart and brain.
Her head is bent; some red carnations glow
Deep in her heavy hair; her large eyes gleam;—
Bright sister stars of those twin worlds of snow,
Her breasts, through which the veinéd violets stream.—
I hold her hand; her smile comes sweetly slow
As thoughts of love that haunt a poet’s dream:
And at her feet once more I sit and hear
Wild words of passion—dead this many a year.
SNOW AND FIRE
Deep-hearted roses of the purple dusk
And lilies of the morn;
And cactus, holding up a slender tusk
Of fragrance on a thorn;
All heavy flowers, sultry with their musk,
Her presence puts to scorn.
For she is like the pale, pale snowdrop there,
Scentless and chaste of heart;
The moonflower, making spiritual the air,
Like some pure work of art;
Divine and holy, exquisitely fair,
And virtue’s counterpart.