I can not love thee as I ought,
For love reflects the thing beloved;
My words are only words, and moved
Upon the topmost froth of thought.
From point to point, with power and grace
And music in the bounds of law,
To those conclusions when we saw
The God within him light his face.
And while the wind began to sweep
A music out of sheet and shroud,
We steer'd her toward a crimson cloud
That landlike slept along the deep.
Abiding with me till I sail
To seek thee on the mystic deeps,
And this electric force, that keeps
A thousand pulses dancing, fail.
And hear at times a sentinel,
Who moves about from place to place,
And whispers to the worlds of space,
In the deep night, that all is well."
"Brawling, or like a clamor of the rooks
At distance, ere they settle for the night."
"In words whose echo lasts, they were so sweet."
"That I could rest, a rock in ebbs and flows."
"But as a man to whom a dreadful loss
Falls in a far land, and he knows it not."
"The long way smoke beneath him in his fear."