But the dearest elf, so the poets say, Is the elf who hides in an eye of gray; Who curls in a dimple and slips along The strings of a lute or a lover's song; Shines in a scent, or wings a rhyme, And laughs in the bells of a wedding chime; Hides unhidden, where none may know, In her bosom's blossom or throat's blue bow-- O ho, O ho!--a friend or foe?
Who the loser, who the winner, If the Fancy fail as preacher?-- None who loved was yet beginner Though another's love-beseecher; Love's revealment 's of the inner Life and deity, the teacher.
Who may falsify the feeling To the lover who is loser? Has she felt:--the mere revealing Of the passion 's his accuser; She conceals it; the concealing Is her own love's self-abuser.
One hath said, no flower knoweth Of the fragrance it revealeth; Song, its soul that overfloweth, Never nightingale's heart feeleth-- Such the love the spirit groweth, Love unconscious if it healeth.
Handsels of anemones The surrendered hours Pour about the sweet Spring's knees-- Crowding babies of the breeze, Her unstudied flowers.
When 't is dawn, bestowing Day Strews with coins of golden Every furlong of his way-- Like a Sultan gone to pray At a Kaaba olden.
Warlock Night, when dips the dark, Opens, tire on tire, Windows of an heavenly ark, Whence the stars swarm, spark on spark, Butterflies of fire.
With the night, the day, the spring,-- Godly chords of beauty,-- We the instrument will string Of our lives and love shall sing Songs of truth and duty.
How it was I can not tell, For I know not where nor why, And the beautiful befell In a land that does not lie East or West where mortals dwell-- But beneath a vaguer sky.
Was it in the golden ages, Or the iron, that I heard, In prophetic speech of sages, How had come a snowy bird 'Neath whose wing lay written pages Of an unknown lover's word?
I forget; you may remember How the earthquake shook our ships; How our city, one huge ember, Blazed within the thick eclipse; When you found me--deep December Sealed on icy eyes and lips.
I forget. No one may say Pre-existences are true: Here 's a flower dies to-day, Resurrected blooms anew: Death is dumb and Life is gray-- Who shall doubt what God can do!
As to this, nothing to tell, You being all my belief; Doubt may not enter or dwell Here where your image is chief, Royal, to quicken or quell, Swaying no sceptre of grief.