I am in love with high far-seeing places That look on plains half-sunlight and half-storm,— In love with hours when from the circling faces Veils pass, and laughing fellowship glows warm. You who look on me with grave eyes where rapture And April love of living burn confessed,The Gods are good! The world lies free to capture! Life has no walls. O take me to your breast! Take me,-be with me for a moment's span!I am in love with all unveiled faces.
I seek the wonder at the heart of man;
I would go up to the far-seeing places.
While youth is ours, turn toward me for a space The marvel of your rapture-lighted face!
Joy, like a faun, her beautiful young head Lifted from out the couches of the grass Where, but a moment since, pursued you fled; And smiled to hear your tripping footfall pass. For two passed by,-into the meadows gleaming With evening light across an amber stream. O Sweet! I marvel now, with all our dreaming, To find the sweetness sweeter than our dream. Now we return; and Joy amid her grasses Follows our steps with soft and curious eyes, Smiling to see, as your light figure passes, Your hand that in my hand so quiet lies. Wide laughing light across the fields is shed. . . . Gravely Joy bends her beautiful young head.
I have seen beauties where light stabs the hills Gold-shafted through a cloud of rosy stain. I have known splendor where the summer spills Its tropic wildness of torrential rain.
I have felt all the free young dominance
Of winds that walk the mountains in delight To tear the tree-trunks from their rooted stance And make the gorges thunderous of their might. The light, the torrents, and the winds, in you I thought I had perceived to kinship grown. It was a dream. Until this hour, I knew Nothing-nay, nothing all my days have known Where beauty, splendor, freedom, held such part As when you came,—and swept me to your heart.
It was the night, the night of all my dreams. Across the lofty spaces of that room
You stole; and where the moonlight's silver streams Cloudily slanted in upon the gloom,
More silver radiance met them where you moved; And all the beauty of that hazèd west, Wherein the moon was sinking, lay approved Because thus lay your pale, slow-curving breast. I shall remember,-aye, when death must cover My soul and body with its rayless tide,— The madness and the peace of that wild lover Drunken with life's whole wonder at your side. I shall remember in life's stormiest deep,- Even as that night I knew you there in sleep.
O rare and holy, O taper lit for me Before vast altars in the lonely dark,- Without your gleam, dim were my soul to see Where in star-spaces, imperial and stark And sacrosanct, his ancient throned reign God holds o'er stars and swallows as of yore; Up through his Gothic vault I yearned in vain And turned back baffled from him evermore. In secular joys I must interpret heaven; In ecstasies profane I must embrace His glory, seek in revels lightning-riven
All I shall ever witness of his face,
And in wild flight, with passion winged and shod, Circle and beat the citadel of God.
The entrails of a cat,—some rusty wood,- Certain pegs, pins, in curious manner bent,— These yield the spirit in its singing mood The one supreme heaven-scaling instrument. And I, who rate man's clay not overmuch,
Marvel not more when from the bow-swept strings Celestial music soars, than when we touch From mortal flesh strains of immortal things. To worlds beyond the world of its resort The viol uplifts its ecstasy or despair.- O love, who knows what white Hyperian court Welcomes our spirits, through the cloven air Rising, beyond the instrument set free On the wild wings of loosened melody?
Strange! to remember that I late was fain
To yield death back my poor undated lease, So wearied had I at life's gate in vain Asked wonders, and been doled not even peace. I had grown sceptic of the exalted will
That wins not ever nearer to its aim.
Grey seemed all lures, all calling voices still; Rest only seemed salvation Then you came And filled my dusk with stars. I understood At last what coward languor had been mine. And as your sweetness stung my brain and blood Like the wild rapture of some winged wine I stormed the gates that crusts to beggars give! Life decks its halls for him who dares to live. .
Ah, life is good! And good thus to behold From far horizons where their tents are furled The mighty storms of Being rise, unfold,
Mix, strike, and crash across a shaken world:- Good to behold their trailing rearguards pass, And feel the sun renewed its sweetness send Down to the sparkling leaf-blades of the grass, And watch the drops fall where the branches bend. I think to-day I almost were content
To hear some bard life's epic story tell,
To view the stage through some small curtain-rent, Mere watcher at this gorgeous spectacle.
But now the curtain lifts:—my soul's swift powers Rise robed and crowned-for lo! the play is ours!
To-day, grown rich with what I late have won, Across the dusk I reach my hand to you.
Cold as a leaf long pillowed on a stone
Your hand takes mine, like something strange and new. So soon grown careless? . . . No, for in your eyes A tenderness still lives, half-shy, half-bold . . . Then sudden wisdom to my trouble cries:
I know you still my love, but not the old. That which I loved and won now all is gone; She was an hour, a moment, a swift mood,— Vanished forever into deeps unknown,- And a new creature rules your brain and blood. Yesterday you were mine, beloved and fair; To-day I seek,—another love is there.
I see the days stretch out in wavering line Toward that sure day when we shall lie in mould. What fate, I wonder, sordid or divine,
Within their close-shut hands for us they hold? We have walked with the winds in chasmy places, And been as birds down sea-born tempests flung,— Seen joy and wonder on each other's faces,
And learned that life is maddening still, and young. Will the slow days cancel,—or reconcile,- These with more sober meanings that they bring? Shall we part bitter, or with humorous smile, Or with heart-rent tragic remembering?— Or sink in friendship, each a tired guest Who finds the dreamless fireside-slumber best?
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