VI. Again with a lifted voice, like a choral trumpet that takes The lowest note of a viol that trembles, and triumphing breaks On the air with it solemn and clear,—' Behold! I have sinned not in this! Where I loved, I have loved much and well,—I have verily loved not amiss. Let the living,' she said, 'Inquire of the dead, In the house of the pale-fronted images: My own true dead will answer for me, that I have not loved amiss 'The least touch of their hands in the morning, I keep it by day and by night; Their least step on the stair, at the door, still throbs through me, if ever so light; Their least gift, which they left to my childhood, far off in the long-ago years, Is now turned from a toy to a relic, and seen through the crystals of tears. Dig the snow,' she said, For my churchyard bed, Yet I, as I sleep, shall not fear to freeze, If one only of these my beloveds, shall love me with heart-warm tears, As I have loved these! VIII. 'If I angered any among them, from thenceforth my own life was sore; If I fell by chance from their presence, I clung to their memory more : Their tender I often felt holy, their bitter I sometimes called sweet; And whenever their heart has refused me, I fell down straight at their feet. I have loved,' she said,— 'Man is weak, God is dread, Yet the weak man dies with his spirit at ease, Having poured such an unguent of love but once on the Saviour's feet, As I lavished for these.' IX. Go, I cried, thou hast chosen the Human, and left the Divine! Then, at least, have the Human shared with thee their wild berry-wine ? Have they loved back thy love, and when strangers approached thee with blame, Have they covered thy fault with their kisses, and loved thee the same? But she shrunk and said, Must sweep in the wrath of his judgment-seas, If He shall deal with me sinning, but only indeed the same And no gentler than these.' F VOL. III. LOVED ONCE. I. I CLASSED, appraising once, The fall of kisses on unanswering clay, With a less bitter leaven of sure despair II. And who saith, I loved ONCE'? Not angels,-whose clear eyes, love, love foresee, And by To Love do apprehend To Be. Not God, called LOVE, His noble crown-name casting The great God changing not from everlasting, III. Oh, never is 'Loved ONCE' Thy word, thou Victim-Christ, misprizëd friend! But having loved Thou lovest to the end. Man desecrates the eternal God-word Love By his No More, and Once. IV. How say ye,' We loved once,' Ah, friends, and would ye wrong each other so? Whose tears have fallen for you, whose smiles have shone Say calm of me, sweet friends, when out of sight? Stand in between me and your happy light? And all that is not love in me, decayed? Such words-Ye loved me ONCE! |