A god that hath no earthly metaphor,
A blinding word that hath no earthly rhyme,
Love! we can only call and no name more;
As the great lonely thunder rolls sublime,
As the great sun doth solitary climb,
And we have but themselves to know them by,
Just so Love stands a stranger amid Time:
The god is there, the great voice speaks on high,
We pray, 'What art thou, Lord?' but win us no reply.
So in the dark grew Love, but feared to flower,
Dreamed to himself, but never spake a word,
Burned like a prisoned fire from hour to hour,
Sang his dear song like an unheeded bird;
Waiting the summoning voice so long unheard,
Waiting with weary eyes the gracious sign
To bring his rose, and tell the dream he dared,
The tremulous moment when the star should shine,
And each should ask of each, and each should answer
—'Thine.'
Winter to-day, but lo! to-morrow spring!
They waited long, but oh at last it came,
Came in a silver hush at evening;
Francesca toyed with threads upon a frame,
Hard by young Paolo read of knight and dame
That long ago had loved and passed away:
He had no other way to tell his flame,
She dare not listen any other way—
But even that was bliss to lovers poor as they.
The world grew sweet with wonder in the west
The while he read and while she listened there,
And many a dream from out its silken nest
Stole like a curling incense through the air;
Yet looked she not on him, nor did he dare:
But when the lovers kissed in Paradise
His voice sank and he turned his gaze on her,
Like a young bird that flutters ere it flies,—
And lo! a shining angel called him from her eyes.
Then from the silence sprang a kiss like flame,
And they hung lost together; while around
The world was changed, no more to be the same
Meadow or sky, no little flower or sound
Again the same, for earth grew holy ground:
While in the silence of the mounting moon
Infinite love throbbed in the straining bound
Of that great kiss, the long-delaying boon,
Granted indeed at last, but ended, ah! so soon.
As the great sobbing fulness of the sea
Fills to the throat some void and aching cave,
Till all its hollows tremble silently,
Pressed with sweet weight of softly-lapping wave:
So kissed those mighty lovers glad and brave.
And as a sky from which the sun has gone
Trembles all night with all the stars he gave
A firmament of memories of the sun,—
So thrilled and thrilled each life when that great kiss was done.
But coward shame that had no word to say
In passion's hour, with sudden icy clang
Slew the bright morn, and through the tarnished day
An iron bell from light to darkness rang:
She shut her ears because a throstle sang,
She dare not hear the little innocent bird,
And a white flower made her poor head to hang—
To be so white! once she was white as curd,
But now—'Alack!' 'Alack!' She speaks no other word.
The pearly line on yonder hills afar
Within the dawn, when mounts the lark and sings
By the great angel of the morning star,—
That was his love, and all free fair fresh things
That move and glitter while the daylight springs:
To thus know love, and yet to spoil love thus!
To lose the dream—O silly beating wings—
Great dream so splendid and miraculous:
O Lord, O Lord, have mercy, have mercy upon us.
She turned her mind upon the holy ones
Whose love lost here was love in heaven tenfold,
She thought of Lucy, that most blessed of nuns
Who sent her blue eyes on a plate of gold
To him who wooed her daily for her love—
'Mine eyes!' 'Mine eyes!' 'Here,—go in peace, they are!'
But ever love came through the midnight grove,
Young Love, with wild eyes watching from afar,
And called and called and called until the morning star.
Ah, poor Francesca, 'tis not such as thou
That up the stony steeps of heaven climb;
Take thou thy heaven with thy Paolo now—
Sweet saint of sin, saint of a deathless rhyme,
Song shall defend thee at the bar of Time,
Dante shall set thy fair young glowing face
On the dark background of his theme sublime,
And Thou and He in your superb disgrace
Still on that golden wind of passion shall embrace.