If I might hold her by the hand,—
Her hands so full of soothing peace!—
Her heart would hear and understand
My heart’s demand,
And all her idling cease.
If she would let my eyes look in
Her eyes, whose deeps are full of truth,
Her soul might see how mine would win
Her, without sin,
In all her happy youth.
If I might kiss her mouth, and lead
The kiss up to her eyes and hair,
There is no prayer that so could plead,—
And find sure heed,—
My love’s divine despair.
XII
“And, uninstructed, smiled and wrote ‘despair,’
Enamoured, yet fearful of the shade that should
Some day come stealing through my silent door
To sit unbidden through the lonely hours.—
I cast the shudder off, and in the fields
Found hope again, and beauty born of dreams:
For it was summer, and all living things,
The common flowers and the birds and bees,
Became interpreters of love for me:
Say that he can not tell her how he loves her—
Words, for such adoration, often fail,—
When but a bow of ribbon, glove that gloves her,
Clothes her fair femininity in mail.
So many ways and wisdoms to express what
To th’ language of devotion is denied;
Ambassadors to make the maiden guess what
Before her heart’s high fortress long has sighed.
A bird to sing his secret—she’ll perpend him:
A bee to bid her soul to hear and see:
A blossom, like a sweet appeal, to bend him,
Before her there, upon a worshiping knee.
XIII
“So was my love confessed to you. I thought
You loved me as love led me to believe:
And so, no matter where I, dreaming, went
Among the hills, the woods, and quiet fields,
All had a poetry so intimate,
So happy and so ready that, for me,
’Twas but to stoop and gather as I went,
As one goes reaching roses in the June.
Three withered wild ones that I gathered then
I send you now. Their scent and bloom are dust: