Of tenderness and bliss.

And on those stormy days when evenings share
With highest heaven all their cruel despair,
We seek forgiveness as the night unrolls—
Forgiveness for the sweetness in our souls.




XXIII


Oh, let us live out love with all our powers,
Aspire audaciously in thoughts most high,
That they may interweave in harmony
In the supremest ecstasy of ours.
Because within our twined souls
Something more pure than aught in us,
More sacred, mightier, unrolls—
Join we our hands, and let us seek it thus.

What matters it that naught but tears,
Our halting speech avail
For that whose puissant beauty, as it nears,
Doth make our two hearts quail?
Oh, may we thus forever meet

Love's stern, ensweetened pains,
Kneeling, by fervour overcome,
Before the sudden god within that reigns,
So violent and so burning sweet,
Our very souls succumb.




XXIV


No sooner lip to lip, than we are fraught
With sun-lit fervour that o'erpowers,
As though two gods within us sought
A god-like union in these souls of ours;
Ah, how we feel divinity is near—
Our hearts so freshened by their primal might
Of light,
That in their clarity the universe shines clear.
Ah, joy alone, the ferment of the earth,
Doth bring to life and stir
To far, illimitable birth;
As there above, across the bars
Of heaven, where voyage veils of gossamer,
Are born the myriad-flowering stars.

How for us is design of life profound!
All seems as pure as leaping fire—
Our words so filled with fair desire
We say them o'er to hear them ceaseless sound.
We are the ones, victorious and sublime,
Who seek eternity,
With humble pride;—our love shall ever be
Free from the bonds of time.




XXV


That nothing may elude our close embrace,
This depth of holy love,
That through the body love be clear with grace,
I seek with thee the garden of our love.
Thy breast is there, an offering,
Thy hands reach out to me,
Naive and tender whispering
Is breathed and heard by thee.
The shadows from the branches now
O'er thy throat and visage pass,
Thy hair has spread its blossoms low
In garlands, on the grass.
All blue and silver broods the night,
A silent, sleeping bed, this hour—
Sweet night! whose breezes one by one deflower
The lilies trembling in the low moon's light.




XXVI


Although, these Autumn eves,
So wistfully,
Between the trees, all down the paths
Fall the listless yellow leaves
Between the trees and down the paths,
Although while Autumn grieves,
The night-wind reaps a harvest pale,
So wistfully,
Where the late-blown roses fail
Loosing petals wan in showers—
Ah, let no petal from our love
Fall and wither with the flowers.
But let us both lean close above
The smouldering hearth of memory—
But let us tend and feed the glowing coals
And reach our hands and warm our souls
Against the winter-cold and misery,
Against the hour that tolls the death of all desire,
Against our very selves, our stricken passion—
Oh, lean with me above the blessed fire
That Memory's hands have kindled in