Touch, and clasp, and be close! Kiss, oh kiss, and be warm!
What is here, O beloved, so like a sea without sound?
Under the swathe at our feet, swifter than wings of storm,
Summer speeds on his way: Spring lies dead in the ground.
How like a closing flower, clasped by a sleeping bee,
Life folds over us now:--and here in the midst love lies.
O beloved, O flower of night, no morrow's moon shall we see:
Between a dusk and a day we meet, and at dawn Time dies!
THE PALACES OF THE ROSE
(A VALENTINE)
Which of my palaces? Gold one by one,
Of all the splendid houses of my throne,
This day in grave thought have I over-gone:
Those roofs of stars where I have lived alone
Gladly with God; those blue-encompassed bowers
Hushed round with lakes, and guarded with still flowers,
Where I have watched a face from eve till morn,
Wondering at being born--
Then on from morn again till the next eve,
Still with strange eyes, unable to believe;
And yet, though week and month and year went by.
Incredulous of my ensorcelled eye.
O had I thus in trance for ever stayed,
Still were she there in the reed-girdled isle,
And I there still--I who go treading now
Eternity, a-hungered mile by mile:
Because I pressed one kiss upon her brow,--
After a thousand years that seemed an hour
Of looking on my flower,
After that patient planetary fast,
One kiss at last;
One kiss--and then strange dust that once was she.
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