Chapter 42

poems_.

Love me, beloved; the thick clouds lower; A sleepiness filleth the earth and air; The rain has been falling for many an hour; A weary look the summer doth wear: Beautiful things that cannot be so; Loveliness clad in the garments of woe.

Love me, beloved; I hear the birds; The clouds are lighter; I see the blue; The wind in the leaves is like gentle words Quietly passing 'twixt me and you; The evening air will bathe the buds With the soothing coolness of summer floods.

Love me, beloved; for, many a day, Will the mist of the morning pass away; Many a day will the brightness of noon Lead to a night that hath lost her moon; And in joy or in sadness, in autumn or spring, Thy love to my soul is a needful thing.

Love me, beloved; for thou mayest lie Dead in my sight, 'neath the same blue sky; Love me, O love me, and let me know The love that within thee moves to and fro; That many a form of thy love may be Gathered around thy memory.

Love me, beloved; for I may lie Dead in thy sight, 'neath the same blue sky; The more thou hast loved me, the less thy pain, The stronger thy hope till we meet again; And forth on the pathway we do not know, With a load of love, my soul would go.

Love me, beloved; for one must lie Motionless, lifeless, beneath the sky; The pale stiff lips return no kiss To the lips that never brought love amiss; And the dark brown earth be heaped above The head that lay on the bosom of love.

Love me, beloved; for both must lie Under the earth and beneath the sky; The world be the same when we are gone; The leaves and the waters all sound on; The spring come forth, and the wild flowers live, Gifts for the poor man's love to give; The sea, the lordly, the gentle sea, Tell the same tales to others than thee; And joys, that flush with an inward morn, Irradiate hearts that are yet unborn; A youthful race call our earth their own, And gaze on its wonders from thought's high throne; Embraced by fair Nature, the youth will embrace. The maid beside him, his queen of the race; When thou and I shall have passed away Like the foam-flake thou looked'st on yesterday.

Love me, beloved; for both must tread On the threshold of Hades, the house of the dead; Where now but in thinkings strange we roam, We shall live and think, and shall be at home; The sights and the sounds of the spirit land No stranger to us than the white sea-sand, Than the voice of the waves, and the eye of the moon, Than the crowded street in the sunlit noon. I pray thee to love me, belov'd of my heart; If we love not truly, at death we part; And how would it be with our souls to find That love, like a body, was left behind!

Love me, beloved; Hades and Death Shall vanish away like a frosty breath; These hands, that now are at home in thine, Shall clasp thee again, if thou still art mine; And thou shall be mine, my spirit's bride, In the ceaseless flow of eternity's tide, If the truest love that thy heart can know Meet the truest love that from mine can flow. Pray God, beloved, for thee and me, That our souls may be wedded eternally.

[_He closes the book, and is silent for some moments_.]

Ah me, O Poet! did _thy_ love last out The common life together every hour? The slumber side by side with wondrousness Each night after a day of fog and rain? Did thy love glory o'er the empty purse, And the poor meal sometimes the poet's lot? Is she dead, Poet? Is thy love awake?

Alas! and is it come to this with me? _I_ might have written that! where am I now? Yet let me think: I love less passionately, But not less truly; I would die for her-- A little thing, but all a man can do. O my beloved, where the answering love? Love me, beloved. Whither art thou gone?

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