| |
| LO, what a golden day it is! | |
| The glad sun rives the sapphire deeps | |
| Down to the dim pearl-floor’d abyss | |
| Where, cold in death, my lover sleeps; | |
| |
| Crowns with soft fire his sea-drench’d hair, | 5 |
| Kisses with gold his lips death-pale, | |
| Lets down from heaven a golden stair, | |
| Whose steps methinks his soul doth scale. | |
| |
| This is my treasure. White and sweet, | |
| He lies beneath my ardent eyne, | 10 |
| With heart that nevermore shall beat, | |
| Nor lips press softly against mine. | |
| |
| How like a dream it seems to me, | |
| The time when hand in hand we went | |
| By hill and valley, I and he, | 15 |
| Lost in a trance of ravishment! | |
| |
| I and my lover here that lies | |
| And sleeps the everlasting sleep, | |
| We walk’d whilere in Paradise; | |
| (Can it be true?) Our souls drank deep | 20 |
| |
| Together of Love’s wonder-wine: | |
| We saw the golden days go by, | |
| Unheeding, for we were divine; | |
| Love had advanced us to the sky. | |
| |
| And of that time no traces bin, | 25 |
| Save the still shape that once did hold | |
| My lover’s soul, that shone therein, | |
| As wine laughs in a vase of gold. | |
| |
| Cold, cold he lies, and answers not | |
| Unto my speech; his mouth is cold | 30 |
| Whose kiss to mine was sweet and hot | |
| As sunshine to a marigold. | |
| |
| And yet his pallid lips I press; | |
| I fold his neck in my embrace; | |
| I rain down kisses none the less | 35 |
| Upon his unresponsive face: | |
| |
| I call on him with all the fair | |
| Flower-names that blossom out of love; | |
| I knit sea-jewels in his hair; | |
| I weave fair coronals above | 40 |
| |
| The cold, sweet silver of his brow: | |
| For this is all of him I have; | |
| Nor any Future more than now | |
| Shall give me back what Love once gave. | |
| |
| For from Death’s gate our lives divide; | 45 |
| His was the Galilean’s faith: | |
| With those that serve the Crucified, | |
| He shar’d the chance of Life and Death. | |
| |
| And so my eyes shall never light | |
| Upon his star-soft eyes again; | 50 |
| Nor ever in the day or night, | |
| By hill or valley, wood or plain, | |
| |
| Our hands shall meet afresh. His voice | |
| Shall never with its silver tone | |
| The sadness of my soul rejoice, | 55 |
| Nor his breast throb against my own. | |
| |
| His sight shall never unto me | |
| Return whilst heaven and earth remain: | |
| Though Time blend with Eternity, | |
| Our lives shall never meet again,— | 60 |
| |
| Never by gray or purple sea, | |
| Never again in heavens of blue, | |
| Never in this old earth—ah me! | |
| Never, ah never! in the new. | |
| |
| For me, he treads the windless ways | 65 |
| Among the thick star-diamonds, | |
| Where in the middle æther blaze | |
| The Golden City’s pearl gate-fronds; | |
| |
| Sitteth, palm-crown’d and silver-shod, | |
| Where in strange dwellings of the skies | 70 |
| The Christians to their Woman-God | |
| Cease nevermore from psalmodies. | |
| |
| And I, I wait, with haggard eyes | |
| And face grown awful for desire, | |
| The coming of that fierce day’s rise | 75 |
| When from the cities of the fire | |
| |
| The Wolf shall come with blazing crest, | |
| And many a giant arm’d for war; | |
| When from the sanguine-streaming West, | |
| Hell-flaming, speedeth Naglfar. | 80 |
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