SURELY a brightness moves with me,
For José gazes long and sighs,
Above the pages dim to see
For ghosts of youth that brush his eyes.
And gazing long, old Marta said:
“Some new device has made thee fair,
Yet have I often seen these red
Pomegranate flowers against thy hair.”
I would not have them understand
The hidden thoughts that give me grace,
Nor guess the lights that dreams have fanned,
And read their shining in my face.
But all my heart the Virgin knows.
Before her eyes, so wise they were,
I laid my secret like a rose:
“Mother, I love!” I cried to her.
VI
I HAD no more imagined love
Than dreams the moonflower of its blue.
What sun that warmed its shielding glove,—
What long blind eve that gave it dew,
Could tell that hueless folded thing
Of shining texture silken-loomed,
Or say what marveling birds would sing
The morning that it thrilled and bloomed?
Always it knew in groping thought
Some end would come, some bloom must be,
The blind fulfilment that it wrought
Was strained from darkness restlessly;
Till exquisite completion willed
The answered bud, the dream put by,
And left the flower all sunned, and stilled
With sudden wonder of the sky.