Rosa Rosarum.

43

Rosa Rosarum.

Give me, O friend, the secret of thy heart

Safe in my breast to hide,

So that the leagues which keep our lives apart

May not our souls divide.

Give me the secret of thy life to lay

Asleep within my own,

Nor dream that it shall mock thee any day

By any sign or tone.

Nay, as in walking through some convent-close,

Passing beside a well,

Oft have we thrown a red and scented rose

To watch it as it fell;

Knowing that never more the rose shall rise

To shame us, being dead;

Watching it spin and dwindle till it lies

At rest, a speck of red—

44Thus, I beseech thee, down the silent deep

And darkness of my heart,

Cast thou a rose; give me a rose to keep,

My friend, before we part.

For, as thou passest down thy garden-ways,

Many a blossom there

Groweth for thee: lilies and laden bays,

And rose and lavender.

But down the darkling well one only rose

In all the year is shed;

And o’er that chill and secret wave it throws

A sudden dawn of red.

45

Florentine May.

Still, still is the Night; still as the pause after pain;

Still and as dear;

Deep, solemn, immense; veiling the stars in the clear

Thrilling and luminous blue of the moon-shot atmosphere;

Ah, could the Night remain!

Who, truly, shall say thou art sullen or dark or unseen,

Thou, O heavenly Night,

Clear o’er the valley of olives asleep in the quivering light,

Clear o’er the pale-red hedge of the rose, and the lilies all white

Down at my feet in the green?

Nay, not as the Day, thou art light, O Night, with a beam

Far more dear and divine;

46Never the noon was blue as these tremulous heavens of thine,

Pulsing with stars half seen, and vague in a pallid shine,

Vague as a dream.

Night, clear with the moon, filled with the dreamy fire

Shining in thicket and close,

Fire from the lamp in his breast that the luminous fire-fly throws;

Night, full of wandering light and of song, and the blossoming rose,

Night, be thou my desire!

Night, Angel of Night, hold me and cover me so—

Open thy wings!

Ah, bend above and embrace!—till I hear in the one bird that sings

The throb of thy musical heart in the dusk, and the magical things

Only the Night can know.

47

Serenade.

Moon of my soul, arise!

Ah me, the moon, the moon goes out in clouds;

Lo, a great darkness all the heaven shrouds

And night is in mine eyes.

Star of my life, appear!

Ah, not a star, not one is lit on high—

Only along the edges of the sky

There slants a falling sphere.

48

Invocations.

O song in the nightingale’s throat, O music,

Dropt as it fell by a falling star,—

All of the silence is filled with thy pain,

Listening till it shall echo again.

O song in the nightingale’s throat, O music,

Thou art the soul of the silence afar!

O space of the moon in the starless heaven,

Raining a whiteness on moorland and sea,

Falling as lightly and purely as dew,

All of the shadow thou filterest through—

O space of the moon in the starless heaven,

Surely the night is the shadow of thee!

O silence of Death, O world of darkness,

When over me the last shadow shall fall,

Holdest thou safe in the night all around

Any moon to arise, any music to sound?

O silence of Death, O world of darkness,

Shall we perceive thee or know thee at all?

49

Aubade Triste.

The last pale rank of poplar-trees

Begins to glimmer into light,

With stems and branches faintly white

Against a heaven one dimly sees

Beyond the failing night.

A point of grey that grows to green

Fleck’d o’er with rainy yellow bars,—

A sudden whitening of the stars,

A pallor where the moon has been,

A peace the morning mars;

When, lo! a shiver of the breeze

And all the ruffled birds awake,

The rustling aspens stir and shake;

For, pale, beyond the pallid trees,

The dawn begins to break.

And now the air turns cool and wan,

A drizzling rain begins to fall,

The sky clouds over with a pall—

The night, that was for me, is gone;

The day has come for all.

50

A Jonquil.

IN THE PISAN CAMPO SANTO.

Out of the place of death,

Out of the cypress shadow,

Out of sepulchral earth,

Dust that Calvary gave;

Sprang, as fragrant of breath

As any flower of the meadow,

This, with death in its birth,

Sent like speech from the grave.

So, in a world of doubt,

Love—like a flower—

Blossoms suddenly white,

Suddenly sweet and pure;

Shedding a breath about

Of new mysterious power;

Lifting a hope in the night,

Not to be told, but sure.

51

A Song.

Last night I met mine own true love

Walking in Paradise,

A halo shone above his hair,

A glory in his eyes.

We sat and sang in alleys green

And heard the angels play;

Believe me, this was true last night

Though it is false to-day.

52

Stornelli and Strambotti.

I.

Flower of the vine!

I scarcely knew or saw how love began;

So mean a flower brings forth the sweetest wine!

* * * * *

O mandolines that thrill the moonlit street,

O lemon flowers so faint and freshly blown,

O seas that lap a solemn music sweet

Through all the pallid night against the stone,

O lovers tramping past with happy feet,

O heart that hast a memory of thine own—

For Mercy’s sake no more, no more repeat

The word it is so hard to hear alone!

* * * * *

Flowers in the hay!

My heart and all the fields are full of flowers;

So tall they grow before the mowing-day.

%center%II.

53Rose in the rain!

We part; I dare not look upon your tears:

So frail, so white, they shatter and they stain.

* * * * *

Love is a bird that breaks its voice with singing,

Love is a rose blown open till it fall,

Love is a bee that dies of its own stinging,

And Love the tinsel cross upon a pall.

Love is the Siren, towards a quicksand bringing

Enchanted fishermen that hear her call.

Love is a broken heart,—Farewell,—the wringing

Of dying hands. Ah, do not love at all!

* * * * *

54

Tuscan Olives.

(SEVEN RISPETTI.)

I.

The colour of the olives who shall say?

In winter on the yellow earth they’re blue,

A wind can change the green to white or gray,

But they are olives still in every hue;

But they are olives always, green or white,

As love is love in torment or delight;

But they are olives, ruffled or at rest,

As love is always love in tears or jest.

%center%II.

We walked along the terraced olive-yard,

And talked together till we lost the way;

We met a peasant, bent with age and hard,

Bruising the grape-skins in a vase of clay;

Bruising the grape-skins for the second wine.

We did not drink, and left him, Love of mine;

Bruising the grapes already bruised enough:

He had his meagre wine, and we our love.

%center%III.

55We climbed one morning to the sunny height

Where chestnuts grow no more and olives grow;

Far-off the circling mountains cinder-white,

The yellow river and the gorge below.

“Turn round,” you said, O flower of Paradise;

I did not turn, I looked upon your eyes.

“Turn round,” you said, “turn round, look at the view!”

I did not turn, my Love, I looked at you.

%center%IV.

How hot it was! Across the white-hot wall

Pale olives stretch towards the blazing street;

You broke a branch, you never spoke at all,

But gave it me to fan with in the heat;

You gave it me without a sign or word,

And yet, my love, I think you knew I heard.

You gave it me without a word or sign:

Under the olives first I called you mine.

%center%V.

56At Lucca, for the autumn festival,

The streets are tulip-gay; but you and I

Forgot them, seeing over church and wall

Guinigi’s tower soar i’ the black-blue sky;

A stem of delicate rose against the blue;

And on the top two lonely olives grew,

Crowning the tower, far from the hills, alone;

As on our risen love our lives are grown.

%center%VI.

Who would have thought we should stand again together,

Here, with the convent a frown of towers above us;

Here, mid the sere-wooded hills and wintry weather;

Here, where the olives bend down and seem to love us;

Here, where the fruit-laden olives half remember

All that began in their shadow last November;

Here, where we knew we must part, must part and sever;

Here, where we know we shall love for aye and ever.

%center%VII.

57Reach up and pluck a branch, and give it me,

That I may hang it in my Northern room,

That I may find it there, and wake and see

—Not you! not you!—dead leaves and wintry gloom.

O senseless olives, wherefore should I take

Your leaves to balm a heart that can but ache?

Why should I take you hence, that can but show

How much is left behind? I do not know.

58

Apprehension.

I.

O foolish dream, to hope that such as I

Who answer only to thine easiest moods,

Should fill thy heart, as o’er my heart there broods

The perfect fulness of thy memory!

I flit across thy soul as white birds fly

Across the untrodden desert solitudes:

A moment’s flash of wings; fair interludes

That leave unchanged the eternal sand and sky.

Even such to thee am I; but thou to me

As the embracing shore to the sobbing sea,

Even as the sea itself to the stone-tossed rill.

But who, but who shall give such rest to thee?

The deep mid-ocean waters perpetually

Call to the land, and call unanswered still.

%center%II.

59As dreams the fasting nun of Paradise,

And finds her gnawing hunger pass away

In thinking of the happy bridal day

That soon shall dawn upon her watching eyes;

So, dreaming of your love, do I despise

Harshness or death of friends, doubt, slow decay,

Madness,—all dreads that fill me with dismay

And creep about me oft with fell surmise.

For you are true, and all I hoped you are,

O perfect answer to my calling heart!

And very sweet my life is, having thee.

Yet must I dread the dim end shrouded far;

Yet must I dream: should once the good planks start,

How bottomless yawns beneath the boiling sea!

60

Adam and Eve.

When Adam fell asleep in Paradise

He made himself a helpmeet as he

dreamed;

And, lo! she stood before his waking eyes,

And was the woman that his vision seemed.

She knelt beside him there in tender awe

To find the living fountain of her soul,

And so in either’s eyes the other saw

The light they missed in Heaven, and knew the goal.

Thrice-blessed Adam, husband of thine Eve!

She brought thee for her dowry death and shame;

She taught thee one may worship and deceive;

But yet thy dream and she were still the same;

Nor ever in the desert turned thine eyes

Towards Lilith by the brooks of Paradise.

61

Love Without Wings.

EIGHT SONGS.

I.

I thought: no more the worst endures!

I die, I end the strife,—

You swiftly took my hands in yours

And drew me back to life!

%center%II.

We sat when shadows darken,

And let the shadows be:

Each was a soul to hearken,

Devoid of eyes to see.

You came at dusk to find me;

I knew you well enough ...

O Lights that dazzle and blind me—

It is no friend, but Love!

%center%III.

62How is it possible

You should forget me,

Leave me for ever

And never regret me!

I was the soul of you,

Past Love or Loathing,

Lost in the whole of you ...

Now, am I nothing?

%center%IV.

The fallen oak still keeps its yellow leaves

But all its growth is o’er!

So, at your name, my heart still beats and grieves,

Although I love no more.

%center%V.

And so I shall meet you

Again, my dear;

How shall I greet you?

What shall I hear?

I, you forgot!

(But who shall say

You loved me not

—Yesterday?)

%center%VI.

63Ah me, do you remember still

The garden where we strolled together,

The empty groves, the little hill

Starred o’er with pale Italian heather?

And you to me said never a word,

Nor I a single word to you.

And yet how sweet a thing was heard,

Resolved, abandoned, by us two!

%center%VII.

I know you love me not ... I do not love you;

Only at dead of night

I smile a little, softly dreaming of you

Until the dawn is bright.

I love you not; you love me not; I know it!

But when the day is long

I haunt you like the magic of a poet,

And charm you like a song.

%center%VIII.

O Death of things that are, Eternity

Of things that seem!

Of all the happy past remains to me,

To-day, a dream!

64Long blessèd days of love and wakening thought,

All, all are dead;

Nothing endures we did, nothing we wrought,

Nothing we said.

But once I dreamed I sat and sang with you

On Ida hill.

There, in the echoes of my life, we two

Are singing still.

65

Tuscan Cypress.

(SIXTEEN RISPETTI.)

I.

My mother bore me ’neath the streaming moon,

And all the enchanted light is in my soul.

I have no place amid the happy noon,

I have no shadow there nor aureole.

Ah, lonely whiteness in a clouded sky,

You are alone, nor less alone am I;

Ah, moon, that makest all the roses grey,

The roses I behold are wan as they!

%center%II.

What good is there, Ah me, what good in Love?

Since, even if you love me, we must part;

And since for either, and you cared enough,

There’s but division and a broken heart?

And yet, God knows, to hear you say: My Dear!

I would lie down and stretch me on the bier.

And yet would I, to hear you say: My own!

With mine own hands drag down the burial stone.

%center%III.

66I love you more than any words can say,

And yet you do not feel I love you so;

And slowly I am dying day by day,—

You look at me, and yet you do not know.

You look at me, and yet you do not fear:

You do not see the mourners with the bier.

You answer when I speak and wish me well,

And still you do not hear the passing bell.

%center%IV.

O Love, O Love, come over the sea, come here,

Come back and kiss me once when I am dead!

Come back and lay a rose upon my bier,

Come, light the tapers at my feet and head.

Come back and kiss me once upon the eyes,

So I, being dead, shall dream of Paradise;

Come, kneel beside me once and say a prayer,

So shall my soul be happy anywhere.

%center%V.

I sowed the field of Love with many seeds,

With many sails I sailed before the blast,

And all my crop is only bitter weeds;

My sails are torn, the winds have split the mast.

67All of the winds have torn my sails and shattered,

All of the winds have blown my seed and scattered,

All of the storms have burst on my endeavour,—

So let me sleep at last and sleep for ever.

%center%VI.

I am so pale to-night, so mere a ghost,

Ah, what, to-morrow, shall my spirit be?

No living angel of the heavenly host,

No happy soul, blithe in eternity.

Oh, I shall wander on beneath the moon

A lonely phantom seeking for you, soon;

A wandering ghost, seeking you timidly,

Whom you will tremble, dear, and start to see!

%center%VII.

When I am dead and I am quite forgot,

What care I if my spirit lives or dies?

To walk with angels in a grassy plot,

And pluck the lilies grown in Paradise?

Ah, no! the heaven of all my heart has been

To hear your voice and catch the sighs between.

Ah, no! the better heaven I fain would give,

But in a cranny of your soul to live.

%center%VIII.

68Ah me, you well might wait a little while,

And not forget me, Sweet, until I die!

I had a home, a little distant isle,

With shadowy trees and tender misty sky.

I had a home! It was less dear than thou,

And I forgot, as you forget me now.

I had a home, more dear than I could tell,

And I forgot, but now remember well.

%center%IX.

Love me to-day and think not on to-morrow!

Come, take my hands, and lead me out of doors,

There in the fields let us forget our sorrow,

Talking of Venice and Ionian shores;—

Talking of all the seas innumerable

Where we will sail and sing when I am well;

Talking of Indian roses gold and red,

Which we will plait in wreaths—when I am dead.

%center%X.

There is a Siren in the middle sea

Sings all day long and wreathes her pallid hair.

Seven years you sail, and seven ceaselessly,

From any port ere you adventure there.

69Thither we’ll go, and thither sail away

Out of the world, to hear the Siren play!

Thither we’ll go and hide among her tresses,

Since all the world is savage wildernesses.

%center%XI.

Tell me a story, dear, that is not true,

Strange as a vision, full of splendid things;

Here will I lie and dream it is not you,

And dream it is a mocking bird that sings.

For if I find your voice in any part,

Even the sound of it will break my heart;

For if you speak of us and of our love,

I faint and die to feel the thrill thereof.

%center%XII.

Let us forget we loved each other much,

Let us forget we ever have to part,

Let us forget that any look or touch

Once let in either to the other’s heart.

Only we’ll sit upon the daisied grass

And hear the larks and see the swallows pass;

Only we’ll live awhile, as children play,

Without to-morrow, without yesterday.

%center%XIII.

70Far, far away and in the middle sea—

So still I dream, although the dream is vain,—

There lies a valley full of rest for me,

Where I shall live and you shall love again.

O ships that sail, O masts against the sky,

Will you not stop awhile in passing by?

O prayers that hope, O faith that never knew,

Will you not take me on to heaven with you?

%center%XIV.

Flower of the Cypress, little bitter bloom,

You are the only blossom left to gather;

I never prized you, grown amid the gloom,

But well you last, though all the others wither.

Flower of the Cypress, I will bind a crown

Tight round my brows to still these fancies down.

Flower of the Cypress, I will tie a wreath

Tight round my breast to kill the heart beneath.

%center%XV.

Ah, Love, I cannot die, I cannot go

Down in the dark and leave you all alone!

Ah, hold me fast, safe in the warmth I know,

And never shut me underneath a stone.

71Dead in the grave! And I can never hear

If you are ill or if you miss me, Dear.

Dead, oh my God! and you may need me yet,

While I shall sleep; while I—while I—forget!

%center%XVI.

Come away Sorrow, Sorrow come away—

Let us go sit in some cool, shadowy place;

There shall you sing and hush me all the day,

While I will dream about my lover’s face.

Hush me, O Sorrow, like a babe to sleep,

Then close the lids above mine eyes that weep;

Rock me, O Sorrow, like a babe in pain,

Nor, when I slumber, wake me up again.

72

Arnold Von Winkelried.

The great things that I love I cannot do,

The little things I do I cannot love!

Far from the goal I wander, and above

The voice is mute of Him I never knew.

Nothing is sweet, I find, and nothing true,

And none of all my dreams is dear enough—

And only one is worth the dreaming of;

If I could give my life and die for you!

O easy death, surrounded with alarms,

Blue ranks of serried spears that swerve and start

Where heroes clench their eyes and catch their breath!

To clasp a score of lances in my arms

And turn them from your front deep in my heart

And die, and do you service in my death!

73

Night.

O night eternal and blue,

Holy and soft above,

You seem to lay on my forehead

The touch of an infinite love—

The touch of a love that never

Will understand me aright—

Why should you touch me and love me,

O tender and delicate night?

O night, look in with your stars

On the wintry face of despair,

And your stars will eddy and shrivel

As leaves in a gust of the air!

74

Honour.

One star at least, one star still breaks the night,

Sinister, pallid, as the peace of death;

And through the rain and wind a little light

Streams fitfully across the windy heath.

All round me from the towering seas beneath

Atlantic billows dash their storms of white;

Among the rocks the angry waters seethe;—

In heaven my star, my star is out of sight!

Yet shine again O white Divinity,

And wheresoe’er thou leadest I will go—

What, down? Over the cliff’s edge?

Forth and down?

There shines the path I follow! yet I know

The infamous blind creatures of the sea

Swim dimly with wide faces where I drown.

75

Semitones.

I.

Give me a rose not merely sweet and fresh,

Not only red and bright,

But caught about in such a thorny mesh

As rankles in delight.

Smile on me, Sweet; but look not only kind:

The smile that most endears

Trembles on pallid lips from eyes half-blind

With brine of bitter tears.

%center%II.

Ah, could I clasp thee in mine arms,

And thou not feel me there,

Asleep and free from vain alarms,

Asleep and unaware!

Ah, could I kiss thy pallid cheek,

And thou not know me nigh;

Asleep at last, and very meek,

Who wert as proud as I.

%center%III.

76We did not dream, my Heart, and yet

With what a pang we woke at last!

We were not happy in the past

It is so bitter to forget.

We did not hope, my Soul, for Heaven;

Yet now the hour of death is nigh,

How hard, how strange it is to die

Like leaves along the tempest driven.

77

An Oasis.

You wandered in the desert waste, athirst;

My soul I gave you as a well to drink;

A little while you lingered at the brink,

And then you went, nor either blessed nor cursed.

The image of your face, which sank that day

Into the magic waters of the well,

Still haunts their clearness, still remains to tell

Of one who looked and drank and could not stay.

The sun shines down, the moon slants over it,

The stars look in and are reflected not;

Only your face, unchanged and unforgot,

Shines through the deeps, till all the waves are lit.

My soul I gave you as a well to drink,

And in its depth your face is clearer far

Than any shine of sun or moon or star—

Since then you pause by many a greener brink.

78

Tuberoses.

I.

The Tuberose you left me yesterday

Leans yellowing in the glass we set it in;

It could not live when you were gone away,

Poor spike of withering sweetness changed and thin.

And all the fragrance of the dying flower

Is grown too faint and poisoned at the source,

Like passion that survives a guilty hour,

To find its sweetness heavy with remorse.

What shall we do, my dear, with dying roses?

Shut them in weighty tomes where none will look

—To wonder when the unfrequent page uncloses

Who shut the wither’d blossoms in the book?—

What shall we do, my dear, with things that perish,

Memory, roses, love we feel and cherish?

%center%II.

79Alive and white, we praised the Tuberose,

So sweet it fill’d the garden with its breath,

A spike of waxy bloom that grows and grows

Until at length it blooms itself to death.

Everything dies that lives—everything dies;

How shall we keep the flower we lov’d so long?

O press to death the transient thing we prize,

Crush it, and shut the elixir in a song.

A song is neither live nor sweet nor white;

It hath no heavenly blossom tall and pure,

No fragrance can it breathe for our delight,

It grows not, neither lives; it may endure.

Sweet Tuberose, adieu! you fade too fast!

Only a dream, only a thought, can last.

%center%III.

Who’d stay to muse if Death could never wither?

Who dream a dream if Passion did not pass?

But, once deceived, poor mortals, hasten hither

To watch the world in Fancy’s magic glass.

80Truly your city, O men, hath no abiding!

Built on the sand it crumbles, as it must;

And as you build, above your praise and chiding,

The columns fall to crush you to the dust.

But fashion’d in the mirage of a dream,

Having nor life nor sense, a bubble of nought,

The enchanted City of the Things that Seem

Keeps till the end of time the eternal Thought.

Forswear to-day, forswearing joy and sorrow,

Forswear to-day, O man, and take to-morrow.

81

In Affliction.

I watch the happier people of the house

Come in and out, and talk, and go their ways;

I sit and gaze at them; I cannot rouse

My heavy mind to share their busy days.

I watch them glide, like skaters on a stream,

Across the brilliant surface of the world.

But I am underneath: they do not dream

How deep below the eddying flood is whirl’d.

They cannot come to me, nor I to them;

But, if a mightier arm could reach and save,

Should I forget the tide I had to stem?

Should I, like these, ignore the abysmal wave?

Yes! in the radiant air how could I know

How black it is, how fast it is, below.

82

Remembrance.

O night of Death, O night that bringest all!

Night full of dreams and large with promises,

O night that holdest on thy shadowy knees

Sleep for all fevers, hope for every thrall;

Bring thou to my belovèd, when I die,

The memory of our enchanted past;

So let her turn, remembering me at last,

And I shall hear and triumph where I lie.

Then let my face, pale as a waning moon,

Rise on thy dark and be again as dear;

Let my dead voice find its forgotten tune

And strike again as sweetly on her ear

As when, upon my lips, one far-off June,

Thy name, O Death! she could not brook to hear.

83

Art and Life.

(A SONNET.)

When autumn comes, my orchard trees alone

Shall bear no fruit to deck the reddening year—

When apple gatherers climb the branches sere

Only on mine no harvest shall be grown.

For when the pearly blossom first was blown,

I filled my hands with delicate buds and dear,

I dipped them in thine icy waters clear,

O well of Art! and turned them all to stone.

Therefore, when winter comes, I shall not eat

Of mellow apples such as others prize:

I shall go hungry in a magic spring!—

All round my head and bright before mine eyes

The barren, strange, eternal blossoms meet,

While I, not less an-hungered, gaze and sing.

84

Temple Garlands.

There is a temple in my heart

Where moth or rust can never come,

A temple swept and set apart

To make my soul a home;

And round about the doors of it

Hang garlands that for ever last,

That gathered once are always sweet;

The roses of the Past!

85

Pallor.

The great white lilies in the grass

Are pallid as the smile of death;

For they remember still—alas!—

The graves they sprang from underneath.

The angels up in heaven are pale—

For all have died, when all is said;

Nor shall the lutes of Eden avail

To let them dream they are not dead.

86

Song.

I have lost my singing-voice;

My heyday’s over.

No more I lilt my cares and joys,

But keep them under cover.

My heyday’s gone:

I sit and look on.

Life rushes past with a sob and a moan.

Wherefore should I care to tell

The pang that rends me?

If it leave me all is well;

And if it last it ends me.

The tears that rise

To my entrancèd eyes

Drop for a world full of hunger and sighs.

87

Personality.

(A SESTINA.)

As one who goes between high garden walls,

Along a road that never has an end,

With still the empty way behind, in front,

Which he must pace for evermore alone—

So, even so, is Life to every soul,

Walled in with barriers that no Love can break.

And yet, ah me! how often would we break

Through every fence, and overleap the walls,

And link ourselves to some belovèd soul,

Hearing her answering voice until the end,

Going her chosen way, no more alone,

But happy comrades, seeing Heaven in front.

But, ah, the barrier’s high! and still my front

I dash against the stones in vain, nor break

A passage through, but still remain alone:

Hearing sometimes across the garden walls

A voice the wind brings over, or an end

Of song that sinks like dew into my soul.

88Since others sing, let me forget, my Soul,

How dreary-long the road goes on in front,

And tow’rds how flat, inevitable an end.

Come, let me look for daisies, let me break

The gillyflowers that shelter in the walls—

But, ah! it is so sad to be alone!

For ever, irremediably alone,

Not only I or thou, but every soul,

Each cased and fastened with invisible walls.

Shall we go mad with it? or bear a front

Of desperate courage doomed to fail and break?

Or trudge in sullen patience till the end?

Ah, hope of every heart, there is an end!

An end when each shall be no more alone,

But either dead, or strong enough to break

This prisoning self and find that larger Soul

(Neither of thee nor me) enthroned in front

Of Time, beyond the world’s remotest walls!

I trust the end and sing within my walls,

Sing all alone, to bid some listening soul

Wait till the day break, watch for me in front!

89“Sois par le cœur à ce qui passe et par la pensée à ce qui demeure.”

La Légende Divine.