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Within the voice, within the heart,

Within the mind of Love-Lily, A spirit is born who lifts apart

His tremulous wings and looks at me; Who on my mouth his finger lays,

And shows, while whispering lutes confer,

That Eden of Love's watered ways

Whose winds and spirits worship her.

Brows, hands, and lips, heart, mind, and voice,

Kisses and words of Love-Lily,— Oh! bid me with your joy rejoice

Till riotous longing rest in me! Ah! let not hope be still distraught, But find in her its gracious goal, Whose speech Truth knows not from her thought

Nor Love her body from her soul.

1870.

THE HOUSE OF LIFE

THE SONNET

A Sonnet is a moment's monument,-
Memorial from the Soul's eternity

To one dead deathless hour. Look that

it be,

Whether for lustral rite or dire portent, Of its own arduous fulness reverent : Carve it in ivory or in ebony,

As Day or Night may rule; and let
Time see

Its flowering crest impearled and orient.
A Sonnet is a coin: its face reveals
The Soul,-its converse, to what Power
'tis due :-

Whether for tribute to the august appeals
Of Life, or dower in Love's high retinue,
It serve; or 'mid the dark wharf's cav
ernous breath,

In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death.

PART I. YOUTH AND CHANGE

I. LOVE ENTHRONED

I MARKED all kindred Powers the heart finds fair :

Truth, with awed lips; and Hope, with eyes upcast;

And Fame, whose loud wings fan the

ashen Past

To signal-fires, Oblivion's flight to scare; And Youth, with still some single golden hair

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VIII. LOVE'S LOVERS

SOME ladies love the jewels in Love's

zone

And gold-tipped darts he hath for painless play

In idle scornful hours he flings away; And some that listen to his lute's soft

tone

Do love to vaunt the silver praise their

own;

Some prize his blindfold sight; and there be they

Who kissed his wings which brought him yesterday

And thank his wings to-day that he is flown.

My lady only loves the heart of Love: Therefore Love's heart, my lady, hath for thee

His bower of unimagined flower and tree:

There kneels he now, and all-anhungered of

Thine eyes gray-lit in shadowing hair above,

Seals with thy mouth his immortality.

IX. PASSION AND WORSHIP

ONE flame-winged brought a whitewinged harp-player

Even where my lady and I lay all alone; Saying "Behold, this minstrel is unknown;

Bid him depart. for I am minstrel here:
Only my strains are to Love's dear ones
dear."
Then said I:

66

Through thine hautboy's rapturous tone

Unto my lady still this harp makes

moan,

And still she deems the cadence deep and clear."

Then said my lady: "Thou art Passion of Love,

And this Love's Worship: both he plights to me.

Thy mastering music walks the sunlit

sea:

But where wan water trembles in the grove

And the wan moon is all the light thereof,

This harp still makes my name its voluntary."

X. THE PORTRAIT

O LORD of all compassionate control.
O Love! let this my lady's picture glow

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Still glades; and meeting faces scarcely fann'd:

An osier-odored stream that draws the skies

Deep to its heart; and mirrored eyes in eyes:

Fresh hourly wonder o'er the Summer land

Of light and cloud; and two souls softly spann'd

With one o'erarching heaven of smiles and sighs :-

Even such their path, whose bodies lean unto

Each other's visible sweetness amorously,

Whose passionate hearts lean by Love's high decree

Together on his heart for ever true,
As the cloud-foaming firmamental blue
Rests on the blue line of a foamless sea.

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BEAUTY like hers is genius. Not the call Of Homer's or of Dante's heart sublime,

Not Michael's hand furrowing the zones of time,

Is more with compassed mysteries musical;

Nay, not in Spring's or Summer's sweet footfall

More gathered gifts exuberant Life bequeathes

Than doth this sovereign face, whose love-spell breathes

Even from its shadowed contour on the wall.

As many men are poets in their youth, But for one sweet-strung soul the wires prolong

Even through all change the indomitable song;

So in like wise the envenomed years, whose tooth

Rends shallower grace with ruin void of ruth,

Upon this beauty's power shall wreak

no wrong.

XIX. SILENT NOON

YOUR hands lie open in the long, fresh grass,

The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:

Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms

'Neath billowing skies that scatter and

amass.

All round our nest, far as the eye can

pass,

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Is like a hand laid softly on the soul; Whose hand is like a sweet voice to control

Those worn tired brows it hath the keeping of :

What word can answer to thy wordwhat gaze

To thine, which now absorbs within its sphere

My worshipping face, till I am mirrored there

Light-circled in a heaven of deep-drawn rays?

What clasp, what kiss mine inmost heart can prove,

O lovely and beloved, O my love?

XXVII. HEART'S COMPASS

SOMETIMES thou seem'st not as thyself alone,

But as the meaning of all things that

are;

A breathless wonder, shadowing forth afar

Some heavenly solstice hushed and halcyon;

Whose unstirred lips are music's visible tone;

Whose eyes the sun-gate of the soul unbar,

Being of its furthest fires oracular-
The evident heart of all life sown and

mown.

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