this close where spring
Unfolds within us far from life and pain.
I reason not, nor do I seek to know,
For naught can trouble that within whose scope
Are all of sweet impulse and sudden fervour's glow,
And tranquil flight to sanctuaried hope.
Before I knew, I felt thy clarity;
And 'tis my joy above
All else to fill my heart with love
Nor question why thy voice so calls to me.
Come, let our hearts be true—the day insure
To us the tenderness without the strife,
And let them say that life
Was never made to reach a love so pure.




XIV


Quietly, like stately queens of old
Who, step by languid step, descend the stairs of gold
In fairy tales, thou movest in my dream;
Names I give thee, such as must beseem
All beauty and all radiance; names that soothe,
Resounding silken-smooth,
Sounds that wind and waver, glide and glance,
Weaving my poems, as in subtle dance.

Ah, but how soon I leave this play
When I behold thy wistful way,
Thine unadorned, profoundly wistful way;
Thy forehead unafraid and calmer than the day,
Thy peaceful child-like hands laid open on thy knees,
Thy breathing bosom and the dreamful ease
That on thy deep and limpid spirit lies.
How useless and how little in the sight
Of this are all things—all things, save the naked light
That wells up from thy heart and gathers in thine eyes.




XV


To all thy smiles and tears
My sweetest thoughts I give,
Those from a brimming heart,
And those that live
Too deep for language to impart.

To all thy smiles and tears,
And to thy soul, my soul,
With all its smiles and tears,
And its caress.

See thou, how dawn has blanched all the earth,
The shades of gloom seem put to flight,
To vanish comfortless;
The lonely lakes have caught the morning's light,
The wet flow'rs glisten and are filled with mirth,
And the golden woods have swept away the night.

Oh, that I might at last
Enter upon the joyous way,
Oh, that I might at last,
With a victor's joy and a victor's pride,
And thou by my side—
Oh, that I might at last
Enter with thee into love's full day!




XVI


I bathe in thy two eyes my soul entire,
As tho' in purest water it were laid,
And in their sanctities I quench its fire
That tempered and more keen it may be made.
Oh, to join in utter purity,
As two stain'd windows, smitten by the sun,
Mingle their lights in separate clarity
And melt to one!

I am sometimes impatient of my lot
As being one who has not and can not
Attain the perfectness he would espouse;
My heart beats on the bars that are its vows—
My heart whose evil blossoms push their way
Between the rocks of blind brutality
And flaunt shamefacedly
Their swarthy flow'rs in sinister array.
My heart so false—so true—as change the years,
My heart of very contradiction made—
Exaggerating heart where merge and shade
Immensities of joy and startl'd fears.




XVII


That love within our eyes may be
Uttered with all clarity;
Oh, let us cleanse our looks from those
That chose
The way of life's brutality.

The dawn has flowered in red and gold,
Strange softened light
And mist;
It seems as though some tender down of gold
And silver through the twilight kissed,
With dim caresses, all our garden-ways;
Our