Poor helpless blossom orphaned of the sun, How could it thus brave winter's rude estate? Oh love, more helpless love, why bloom so late, Now that the flower-time of the year is done? Since thy dear course must end when scarce begun, Nipped by the cold touch of untoward fate.
It is a solemn evening, golden-clear-- The Alpine summits flame with rose-lit snow And headlands purpling on wide seas below, And clouds and woods and arid rocks appear Dissolving in the sun's own atmosphere And vast circumference of light, whose slow Transfiguration--glow and after-glow-- Turns twilight earth to a more luminous sphere.
Oh heart, I ask, seeing that the orb of day Has sunk below, yet left to sky and sea His glory's spiritual after-shine: I ask if Love, whose sun hath set for thee, May not touch grief with his memorial ray, And lend to loss itself a joy divine?
Thou art the goal for which my spirit longs; As dove on dove, Bound for one home, I send thee all my songs With all my love.
Thou art the haven with fair harbour lights; Safe locked in thee, My heart would anchor after stormful nights Alone at sea.
Thou art the rest of which my life is fain, The perfect peace; Absorbed in thee the world, with all its pain And toil, would cease.
Thou art the heaven to which my soul would go! O dearest eyes, Lost in your light you would turn hell below To Paradise.
Thou all in all for which my heart-blood yearns! Yea, near or far-- Where the unfathomed ether throbs and burns With star on star,
Or where, enkindled by the fires of June, The fresh earth glows, Blushing beneath the mystical white moon Through rose on rose--
Thee, thee I see, thee feel in all live things, Beloved one; In the first bird which tremulously sings Ere peep of sun;
In the last nestling orphaned in the hedge, Rocked to and fro, When dying summer shudders in the sedge, And swallows go;
When roaring snows rush down the mountain-pass, March floods with rills, Or April lightens through the living grass In daffodils;
When poppied cornfields simmer in the heat With tare and thistle, And, like winged clouds above the mellow wheat, The starlings whistle;
When stained with sunset the wide moorlands glare In the wild weather, And clouds with flaming craters smoke and flare Red o'er red heather;