O thought too poor and pale! O words that wanly fail For godlike Love's divine expressing, And all the rhythm of his sweet confessing, Whose full-voiced cry should be Harmonious ecstasy.
Now are ye rulers of the upper air; And though men surge below, not one shall dare To scale the summit of your mystic height, Nor breathe your breath, nor face your burning light. The seed shall break for you, the seasons pass, And you, serene, shall view as in a glass The moving pageant of the happy year, Fleeting from naked twig and garment sere, To wrap itself in snows, to dream and dream On budding boughs, and all the elusive gleam Of happy rivers kissed By sweet, bewildering mist. And so to dream again, and rise in power To the full glory of a new birth-hour. The earth is thine, the starry spaces even, The hour is thine, and maketh its own heaven--
I to write a marriage song, I! Shall mortal man hymn worthily his own love? Yet here is the initial note, the first faint stammering. Remember this, my love, my lady, my soul,--if I had known what your consent would be, I could never have waited for it all these years, here in the still woods. I should have died of hunger. Think of it! one only can bring bread for me, one only give me to drink. Be merciful to me, my bread-giver! One word--not on paper! One minute--let me see you alone!
[Sidenote: _Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume_]
Do not write verse until you fail to express yourself in prose. Verse should glide full-winged over the surface of the waters where the spirit of God lies sleeping. It should deal carelessly with poor things like prepositions and pronouns. They are but the spray-bubbles beaten back by its wings. Your smaller words are staffs falling as regularly and heavily as a tread on a board walk. Your phrases march; they do not fly. You will say that these lines were written under a pressure of strong emotion; but that's no reason. So might a prosy divine put forth his religion as an excuse for prosing. Have your emotion, but keep it to yourself if you can express it no better than this. It is neither "_magnifique_," nor is it--literature. Nor does your prose entirely please me. Look how it is tinged with its own sweetness. Everything is superlative. You are not content to say a thing in one way; you must say it in three, and then overload it with metaphor till the understanding balks at it. You write like this:--