These are Love's shadows, Love knows none but these: Shadows that are the very soul of light, As morning and the morning blossom bright, Or jewelled shadows of moon-haunted seas; The darkest shadows in this world of ours Are made of flowers.
On her own terms, O lover, must thou take The heart's beloved: be she kind, 'tis well, Cruel, expect no more; not for thy sake But for the fire in thee that melts her snows For a brief spell She loves thee--"loves" thee! Though thy heart should break, Though thou shouldst lie athirst for her in hell, She could not pity thee: who of the Rose, Or of the Moon, asks pity, or return Of love for love? and she is even as those. Beauty is she, thou Love, and thou must learn, O lover, this: Thine is she for the music thou canst pour Through her white limbs, the madness, the deep dream; Thine, while thy kiss Can sweep her flaming with thee down the stream That is not thou nor she but merely bliss; The music ended, she is thine no more.
In her Eternal Beauty bends o'er thee, Be thou content; She is the evening star in thy hushed lake Mirrored,--be glad; A soul-less creature of the element, Nor good, nor bad; That which thou callest to in the far skies Comes to thee in her eyes; That thou mayst slake Thy love of lilies, lo! her breasts! Be wise, Ask not that she, as thou, should human be, She that doth smell so sweet of distant heaven; Pity is mortal leaven, Dews know it not, nor morning on the hills, And who hath yet found pity of the sea That blesses, knowing not, and, not knowing, kills; And sister unto all of these is she, Whose face, as theirs, none reads; whose heart none knows; Whose words are as the wind's words, and whose ways, O lover, learn, Swerve not, or turn Aside for prayers, or broken-hearted praise: The young moon looks not back as on she goes. On their own terms, O lover!--Girl, Moon, Rose.
We that were born, beloved, so far apart, So many seas and lands, The gods, one sudden day, joined heart to heart, Locked hands in hands, Distance relented and became our friend, And met, for our sakes, world's end with world's end. The earth was centred in one flowering plot Beneath thy feet, and all the rest was not.
Now wouldst thou rend our nearness, and again Bring distance back, and place Poles and equators, mountain range and plain, Between me and thy face, Undoing what the gods divinely planned; Heart, canst thou part? hand, loose me from thy hand? Not twice the gods their slighted gifts bestow; Bethink thee well, beloved, ere thou dost go.