I have no care for what was most my care, But all around me see fresh beauty born, And common sights grown lovelier than they were: I dream of love, and in the light of morn Tremble, beholding all things very fair And strong with strength that puts my strength to scorn.
_O my goddess divine_ sometimes I say:— Now let this word for ever and all suffice; Thou art insatiable, and yet not twice Can even thy lover give his soul away: And for my acts, that at thy feet I lay; For never any other, by device Of wisdom, love or beauty, could entice My homage to the measure of this day.
I have no more to give thee: lo, I have sold My life, have emptied out my heart, and spent Whate’er I had; till like a beggar, bold With nought to lose, I laugh and am content. A beggar kisses thee; nay love, behold, I fear not: thou too art in beggarment.
All earthly beauty hath one cause and proof, To lead the pilgrim soul to beauty above: Yet lieth the greater bliss so far aloof, That few there be are wean’d from earthly love. Joy’s ladder it is, reaching from home to home, The best of all the work that all was good; Whereof ’twas writ the angels aye upclomb, Down sped, and at the top the Lord God stood.
But I my time abuse, my eyes by day Center’d on thee, by night my heart on fire-- Letting my number’d moments run away-- Nor e’en ’twixt night and day to heaven aspire: So true it is that what the eye seeth not But slow is loved, and loved is soon forgot.
O my life’s mischief, once my love’s delight, That drew’st a mortgage on my heart’s estate, Whose baneful clause is never out of date, Nor can avenging time restore my right: Whom first to lose sounded that note of spite, Whereto my doleful days were tuned by fate: That art the well-loved cause of all my hate, The sun whose wandering makes my hopeless night:
Thou being in all my lacking all I lack, It is thy goodness turns my grace to crime, Thy fleetness from my goal which holds me back; Wherefore my feet go out of step with time, My very grasp of life is old and slack, And even my passion falters in my rhyme.
At times with hurried hoofs and scattering dust I race by field or highway, and my horse Spare not, but urge direct in headlong course Unto some fair far hill that gain I must: But near arrived the vision soon mistrust, Rein in, and stand as one who sees the source Of strong illusion, shaming thought to force From off his mind the soil of passion’s gust.