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| LOVE knoweth every form of air, | |
| And every shape of earth, | |
| And comes, unbidden, everywhere, | |
| Like thought’s mysterious birth. | |
| The moonlit sea and the sunset sky | 5 |
| Are written with Love’s words, | |
| And you hear his voice unceasingly, | |
| Like song, in the time of birds. | |
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| He peeps into the warrior’s heart | |
| From the tip of a stooping plume, | 10 |
| And the serried spears, and the many men, | |
| May not deny him room. | |
| He ’ll come to his tent in the weary night, | |
| And be busy in his dream, | |
| And he ’ll float to his eye in the morning light, | 15 |
| Like a fay on a silver beam. | |
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| He hears the sound of the hunter’s gun, | |
| And rides on the echo back, | |
| And sighs in his ear like a stirring leaf, | |
| And flits in his woodland track. | 20 |
| The shade of the wood, and the sheen of the river, | |
| The cloud, and the open sky,— | |
| He will haunt them all with his subtle quiver, | |
| Like the light of your very eye. | |
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| The fisher hangs over the leaning boat, | 25 |
| And ponders the silver sea, | |
| For Love is under the surface hid, | |
| And a spell of thought has he: | |
| He heaves the wave like a bosom sweet, | |
| And speaks in the ripple low, | 30 |
| Till the bait is gone from the crafty line, | |
| And the hook hangs bare below. | |
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| He blurs the print of the scholar’s book, | |
| And intrudes in the maiden’s prayer, | |
| And profanes the cell of the holy man | 35 |
| In the shape of a lady fair. | |
| In the darkest night, and the bright daylight, | |
| In earth, and sea, and sky, | |
| In every home of human thought, | |
| Will Love be lurking nigh. | 40 |
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