But if I lose you, if you part with me,
I will not love you less
Loving so much now. If there is to be
A parting and distress,—
What will avail to comfort or relieve
The soul that’s anguished most?—
The knowledge that it once possessed, perceive,
The love that it has lost.
You must acknowledge, under sun and moon
All that we feel is old;
Let morning flutter from night’s brown cocoon
Wide wings of flaxen gold;
The moon burst through the darkness, soaring o’er,
Like some great moth and white,
These have been seen a myriad times before
And with renewed delight.—
So ’tis with love;—how old yet new it is!—
This only should we heed,—
To once have known, to once have felt love’s bliss,
Is to be rich indeed.—
Whether we win or lose, we lose or win,
Within our gain or loss
Some purpose lies, some end unseen of sin,
Beyond our crown or cross.
XIV
Nearing her home, he speaks:
True, true!—Perhaps it would be best
To be that lone star in the west;
Above the earth, within the skies,
Yet shining here in your blue eyes.
Or, haply, better here to blow
A flower beneath your window low;
That, brief of life and frail and fair,
Finds yet a heaven in your hair.
Or well, perhaps, to be the breeze
That sighs its soul out to the trees;
A voice, a breath of rain or drouth,
That has its wild will with your mouth.
These things I long to be. I long
To be the burthen of some song
You love to sing; a melody,
Sure of sweet immortality.
XV
At the gate. She speaks:
Sunday shall we ride together?
Not the root-rough, rambling way
Through the wood we went that day,
In last summer’s sultry weather.