I watched in awkward wonder for a time
As there she listless lay and sang my rhyme,
Wrapped up in fabrics of an Indian clime
She seemed a Bird of Paradise
Languid from the traversed skies.
A dawn-bright snowy peak her smile . . . Strange I
Should dawdle near her grace admiringly,
When love alarmed and challenged sympathy,
Announced in chills of creeping fear
Danger surely threatening near.
I shrank from searching the abyss I felt
Yawned by; whose verge voluptuous blossoms belt
With dazzling hues:—she speaks! I fall and melt,
One sacred moment drawn to rest,
Deeply weeping in her breast:
Within the throbbing treasure wept? But brief
Those loosening tears of blessed deep relief,
That won triumphant ransom from my grief,
While loving words and comfort she
Breathed in angel tones to me.
Our visions met, when pityingly she flung
Her passionate arms about me, kissing clung,
Close kisses, stifling kisses; till each wrung,
With welded mouths, the other’s bliss
Out in one long sighing kiss.
Love-flower that burst in kisses and sweet tears,
Scattering its roseate dreamflakes, disappears
Into cold truth: for, loud with brazen jeers,
That bell’s toll, clanging in my brain,
Beat me, loth, to earth again:
Where, looking on my Love’s endangered state,
Wrought by keen anguish mad, I struck at fate,
Prostrating mockingly in sport or hate
The aspirations, darkling, we
Cherish and resolve to be.
She spoke, but sharply checked; then as her zone
A lady’s hands would clasp, My Lady’s own
Pressed at her yielding side; her solemn tone
And forward eager face implored
Me to kneel where she adored.
Despite her pain, with tender woman’s phrase
She solaced me, whose part it was to raise
Anew the gladness to her weakened gaze,