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I—CONSUMMATION
THERE was a strangeness on your lips, | |
| Lips that had been so sure; | |
| You still were mine but in eclipse, | |
| Beside me but obscure. | |
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| There was a cloud upon your heart; | 5 |
| For, Celia, where you lay, | |
| Death, come to break your life apart, | |
| Had led your love away. | |
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| Through the cold distance of your eyes | |
| You could no longer see. | 10 |
| But when you died, you heard me rise | |
| And followed suddenly. | |
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| And close beside me, looking down | |
| As I did on the dead, | |
| You made of time a wedding-gown, | 15 |
| Of space a marriage-bed. | |
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| I took, in you, death for a wife, | |
| You married death in me, | |
| Singing, “There is no other life, | |
| No other God than we!” | 20 |
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II—DURING A CHORALE BY CESAR FRANCK
In an old chamber softly lit | |
| We heard the Chorale played, | |
| And where you sat, an exquisite | |
| Image of Life and lover of it, | |
| Death sang a serenade. | 25 |
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| I know now, Celia, what you heard, | |
| And why you turned and smiled. | |
| It was the white wings of a bird | |
| Offering flight, and you were stirred | |
| Like an adventurous child. | 30 |
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| Death sang: “O lie upon your bier, | |
| Uplift your countenance!” | |
| Death bade me be your cavalier, | |
| Called me to march and shed no tear | |
| But sing to you and dance. | 35 |
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| And when you followed, lured and led | |
| By those mysterious wings, | |
| And when I heard that you were dead, | |
| I could not weep. I sang instead, | |
| As a true lover sings. . . . . . . . Today a room is softly lit; | 40 |
| I hear the Chorale played. | |
| And where you come, an exquisite | |
| Image of death and lover of it, | |
| Life sings a serenade. | 45 |
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III—SONGS ASCENDING
Love has been sung a thousand ways— | |
| So let it be; | |
| The songs ascending in your praise | |
| Through all my days | |
| Are three. | 50 |
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| Your cloud-white body first I sing; | |
| Your love was heaven’s blue, | |
| And I, a bird, flew carolling | |
| In ring on ring | |
| Of you. | 55 |
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| Your nearness is the second song; | |
| When God began to be, | |
| And bound you strongly, right or wrong, | |
| With his own thong, | |
| To me. | 60 |
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| But oh, the song, eternal, high, | |
| That tops these two!— | |
| You live forever, you who die, | |
| I am not I | |
| But you. | 65 |
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