| Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907. | | | Love in Exile (Songs)
VI. “L’Envoi” | | By Mathilde Blind (1841–1896) |
| | | 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. | |
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| Thou art the haven with fair harbour lights; | 5 |
| Safe locked in thee, | |
| My heart would anchor after stormful nights | |
| Alone at sea. | |
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| Thou art the rest of which my life is fain, | |
| The perfect peace; | 10 |
| Absorbed in thee the world, with all its pain | |
| And toil, would cease. | |
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| Thou art the heaven, to which my soul would go | |
| O dearest eyes, | |
| Lost in your light you would turn hell below | 15 |
| 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, | 20 |
| |
| 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, | 25 |
| 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, | 30 |
| 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 | 35 |
| In daffodils; | |
| |
| When poppied cornfields simmer in the heat | |
| With tare and thistle, | |
| And, like winged clouds above the mellow wheat, | |
| The starlings whistle; | 40 |
| |
| When stained with sunset the wide moorlands glare | |
| In the wild weather, | |
| And clouds with flaring craters smoke and flare | |
| Red o’er red heather; | |
| |
| When the bent moon, on frostbound midnight’s waking, | 45 |
| Leans to the snow | |
| Like some world-mother whose deep heart is breaking | |
| O’er human woe. | |
| |
| As the round sun rolls red into the ocean, | |
| Till all the sea | 50 |
| Glows fluid gold, even so life’s mazy motion | |
| Is dyed with thee: | |
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| For as the wave-like years subside and roll, | |
| O heart’s desire, | |
| Thy soul glows interfused within my soul, | 55 |
| A quenchless fire. | |
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| Yea, thee I feel, all storms of life above, | |
| Near though afar; | |
| O thou my glorious morning star of love | |
| And evening star. | 60 | | | |
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