compassion.
And if the skies be drowned
While passionate Autumn roams the world and rakes
The woods and the wild lakes,
No echo of the madness shall be found
In that safe garden, inmost and supreme,
here in the breathing stillness sound
The quiet footfalls of our Dream.




XXVII


The gift of body, when the soul is given,
Is naught but harmony
Of two tendernesses driven
One to the other, fervidly.
Glory in thyself thou findest sweet.
So fair in thy fresh purity,
Only to offer me
The wondrous gift complete.
I come to thee, and know
Exaltation in this gift of thine;
Always the truer, the more pure I grow
Since thy dear body gave itself to mine.
Love! oh, may it overflow
Our hearts and be the reason in our lives,
Whose maddest happiness is one that strives
Toward the madness of a trust divine.




XXVIII


Was there ever in us one caress,
One joyous laugh, or tenderness
We dared not strew before us on our way?
Or ever prayer in silence heard,
Whose dim, unuttered word
We sought to stay?
A single yearning of compassion.
A quiet vow or one of passion
We sought to slay?
So, loving thus,
Our hearts, like two apostles, went
Seeking the lowly ones with timid brow,
Who, feeling then so bound to us,
Proclaimed on high love's ravishment,
As a flowery people loves the bough
That holds them bathed in the sun's warm ray;
Our souls, grown greater still by this re-birth,
Began to glory those who feel love's sway,
Increasing love by love's own might,
To cherish thus divinely the whole earth
That seemed reflected in our own souls' light.




XXIX


This fair garden flowering to flame,
That seems the wondrous beauty to proclaim
Of that clear garden whereunto we cleave,
Is crystallised in frosted gold this eve.
A great white silence drops athwart the sky,
Out there where gleams a marble hue,
Whither, one by one, the tall trees stride,
Each with its shadow, long and blue
And lonely, by its side.
No stir of wind; but soundlessly
The blanched veils of cold alone
Unfold themselves mysteriously
On the marshes' silver or the roads' white stone.
The stars are lustrous with desire;
Like furbished steel the rime
Within the cold, translucid air.
From some infinity sublime,
Across the paleness of a waning moon,
Falls shower on shower of fire—
Star-dust that there
Sinks in a scintillating swoon.
It is the hour divine, when wistfully
A million eyes look down upon the earth—
Upon the hazards of our human birth—
From out immutable eternity.




XXX


If it ever be
That thou and I should bring
One to the other suffering
Of loss and sorrow; or if fate decree
That weariness of banal joys unstring
The golden bow within us of desire;
If thought's clear crystal vase entire
Must in our spirits fall and break below;
If, spite of all, I lie at last supine,
Vanquish'd for not having been enough
The prey of great, divine,
Utter nobility—
Oh! let us be like maddened fools that climb the height
Beneath the ruin'd sky; and let us closer, closer cling,
And in one monstrous flight,
With sun-drenched souls, cleave the on-rushing night!