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THE EQUINOX
In the mist, and in the sunshine, and the day!
Thou art married to Love, maybe, for Love sits weeping
In my desolate heart, nor know I what can ail him,
Save it be that thou art fled; immortal Love
And mortal Death, and are ye separate still,
Even as I and as the unknown Rose?
Maybe the Rose is Death, and I am Love,
Wed to young Life, and jealous of desire
Of Death! Oh, in the cool green colonnades
I have lingered late, even till the night’s slow fall,
And I have heard the dying voices of day,
The market-women’s chatter growing faint
In the twilight, and the drovers plodding home
With their heavy beasts; and the dark blue sky and the
stars
Have lingered together there, and stayed with me,
So sunset’s hour hath passed before me, slow
Receding on the pathway of the day.
Wherefore still strive when all must end in death?
How shall be freedom when the insistent lover
Shall seize thee at length in sleep, and, ravishing thee,
Bear thee, unknowing, back to the heart of things,
The dim, black centre whence sprang Love and Fire
Who made the world, and made all suns and worlds,
Tearing the thing I now make manifest
From the heart of the silent god? Oh, wherefore strive?
Art thou not still content to die, sweetheart?
Or wilt thou seek me still through all the lives