The Star in the West

86 THE STAR IN THE WEST And lie like love ; and she at eventide Swore to seek me and gather one by one The threads of labyrinthine love new spun , Cretan for monstrous shadows serpent - eyed . So the last kiss passed like a poison - pain , Knowing we might not ever kiss again . Mad tears fell fast : “ Next year !" in cruel distress We sobbed and stretched our arms out , and despaired , And - parted . Out the brute - side of truth flared ; “ Thank God I've finished with that foolishness !"1 all my This last line is almost staggering , but such a cruel truth is soon given the lie : “ I am a fool , tossing a coin with Fate ,” says he ; and again , “ I love you , and shall love you till I die .” “ I love you , and shall love you life .” “ I love you and shall love you after death .” This is the Higher Love ; and so ends one of the greatest poems of true and pure love ever written , musical as the breath of stormy Aeolus . Fas cinated we read its verses again and again , dazzled with their mystic beauty , their harmony , and , above all , their intense human love . As the Editor says , those who fail to find religion in such poems must indeed be idiots , idiots who would bowdlerize Shake speare , Shelley , and Browning . Neither was their love a mere selfish gratification of the senses . Anxiously they waited to see “ whether the mother stood behind the bride ," falteringly he would not part with her till she held the key of the hereafter " ; and ultimately they resigned all for the sake of others : Even while I begged her ,I well knew she must . We could not , loving to see children laugh , Let cowards twit them with their mother's lust . Even our own purity confirmed the trust . 1 Alice , an Adultery , vol . ii, p . 84 .