Collected Works (Vol. III)

54 Thyself thyself surpassing; all were dull, And thou, O rose, sole, sacred, wonderful, Single in love and aim, Double in form and name, Triple in energy of radiant flame, Informing all, in all most beautiful, Circle and sphcre, perfect in every part, High above hope of Art: Though, be it said ! thou art nowhere now, Save in the secret chamber of my heart, Behind the brass of my anonymous brow. ! 12. Ay! let the coward and slave who writes write on ! He is no more harm to Love than the grey snake Who lurks in the dusk brake lor the bare-legged village-boy, is to the Sun, The Sire of Life. The Lover and the Wife, Immune, intact, ignore. The people hear; Then, be the people smitten of grey Fear, It is no odds ! 13. I have seen the eternal Gods Sit, star-wed, in old Egypt by the Nile; The same calm pose, the inscrutable, wan smile, On every lip alike. Time hath not had his will to strike At them; they abide, they pass through all. Though their most ancient names may fall, They stir not nor are weary of Life, for with them, even as with us, Life is but Love. They know, weknow; let, then, the writing go! That, in the very deed, we do not know. 14. It may be in the centuries of our life Since we were man and wife There stirs some incarnation of that love. Some rosebud in the garden of spices blows, Some offshoot from the Rose Of the World, the Rose of all Delight, The Rose of Dew, the Rose of Love and Night, The Rose of Silence, covering as with a vesture The solemn unity of things 1 This poem was issued under the pseudonym ROSA MUNDI, AND OTHER LOVE-SONGS Beheld in the mirror of truth, The Rose indifferent to God's gesture, The Rose on moonlight wings That flies to the TTouse of Tire, The Rose of Honey-in-Youth ! Ah! No dim mystery of desire Kathoms this gulf! No light invades The mystical musical shades Of a faith in the future, a dream of the day When athwart the dim glades Of the forvst a ray Of suntivht shall flash and the dew die away f 15. Let there then be obscurity in this ! There is an after rapture in the kiss. The fire, flesh, perfume, music, that outpaced All time, fly off; they are subtle: there abides A secret and most maiden taste $ Salt, as of the invisible tides Of the molten sea of gold Men may at times behold In the rayless scarab of the sinking sun ; And out of that is won Hardly, with labour and pain that are as pleasure, The first flower of the garden, the stored treasure That lies at the heart's heart of eternity. This treasure is for thee. 16. O! but shall hope arise in happiness? That may not be. My love is like a golden grape, the veins Peep through the ecstasy Of the essence of ivory and silk, Pearl, moonlight, mother-milk That is her skin ; Its swift caress Flits like an angel’s kissin a dream ; remains The healing virtue ; from all sin, All ill, one touch sets free. My love is like a star—oh fool! oh fool ! Is not thy back yet tender from the rod? Is there no learning in the poet’s school? Wilt thou achieve what were too hard for God? I call Him to the battle; ask of me of H. D, Carr. When the hinds calve? What of eternity