Clothed on with bright desire
And hope that makes her strong,
With limbs of frost and fire,
She sits above all wrong,
Her heart a living lyre,
And love its only song.
And in the waking pauses
Of weariness and care,
And when the dark hour draws his
Black dagger of despair,
Above effects and causes
I hear her music there.
The longing’s life hath near it
Of beauty we would see;
The dreams it doth inherit
Of immortality;
Are callings of her spirit
To something yet to be.
TO ONE READING THE MORTE D’ARTHURE
O daughter of our Southern sun,
Sweet sister of each flower,
Dost dream in terraced Avalon
A shadow-haunted hour?
Or stand with Guinevere upon
Some ivied Camelot tower?
Or, in the wind, dost breathe the musk
That blows Tintagel’s sea on?
Or ’mid the lists by castled Usk
Hear some wild tourney’s glee on?
Or ’neath the Merlin moons of dusk
Dost muse in old Caerleon?
Or now of Launcelot, and then
Of Arthur, ’mid the roses,
Dost speak with wily Vivien?
Or, where the shade reposes,
Dost walk with stately, armored men
In marble-fountained closes?
So speak the dreams within thy gaze,
The dreams thy spirit cages,
Would that Romance—which on thee lays
The spell of bygone ages—
Held me! a memory of those days,
A portion of those pages.
THE CROSS
The cross I bear no man shall know—
No man shall see the cross I bear!—
Alas! the thorny path of woe
Up the steep hill of care!