THE PHILOSOPHER AND HIS MISTRESS.
We watch’d the wintry moon
Suffer her full eclipse
Riding at night’s high noon
Beyond the earth’s ellipse.
The conquering shadow quell’d
Her splendour in its robe:
And darkling we beheld
A dim and lurid globe;
Yet felt thereat no dread,
Nor waited we to see
The sullen dragon fled,
The heav’nly Queen go free.
So if my heart of pain
One hour o’ershadow thine,
I fear for thee no stain,
Thou wilt come forth and shine:
And far my sorrowing shade
Will slip to empty space
Invisible, but made
Happier for that embrace.
NARCISSUS.
Almighty wondrous everlasting
Whether in a cradle of astral whirlfire
Or globed in a piercing star thou slumb’rest
The impassive body of God:
Thou deep i’ the core of earth—Almighty!—
From numbing stress and gloom profound
Madest escape in life desirous
To embroider her thin-spun robe.
’Twas down in a wood—they tell—
In a running water thou sawest thyself
Or leaning over a pool: The sedges
Were twinn’d at the mirror’s brim
The sky was there and the trees—Almighty!—
A bird of a bird and white clouds floating
And seeing thou knewest thine own image
To love it beyond all else.