FROM THE SHORE

Love, so strangely lost and found,

Love, beyond the seas of death,

Love, immortally re-crowned,

Love, who swayest this mortal breath,

Sweetlier to thy lover's ear

Steals the tale that ne'er was told;

Bright-eyes, ah, thine arms are near,

Nearer now than e'er of old.

When on earth thy hands were mine,

Mine to hold for evermore,

Oft we watched the sunset shine

Lonely from this wave-beat shore;

Pent in prison-cells of clay,

Time had power on thee and me:

Thou and heaven are one to-day,

One with earth and sky and sea;

Indivisible and one!

Beauty hath unlocked the Gate,

Oped the portals of the sun,

Burst the bars of Time and Fate!

Violets in the dawn of Spring

Hold the secret of thine eyes:

Lilies bare their breasts and fling

Scents of thee from Paradise.

Brooklets have thy talk by rote;

Thy farewells array the West;

Fur that clasped thee round the throat

Leaps — a squirrel — to its nest!

Backward from a sparkling eye

Half-forgotten jests return

Where the rabbit lollops by

Hurry-scurry through the fern!

Roses where I lonely pass

Brush my brow and breathe thy kiss:

Zephyrs, whispering through the grass,

Lure me on from bliss to bliss:

Here thy robe is rustling close,

There thy fluttering lace is blown,—

All the tide of beauty flows

Tributary to thine own.

Birds that sleek their shining throats

Capture every curve from thee:

All their golden warbled notes,

Fragments of thy melody,

Crowding, clustering, one by one,

Build it upward, spray by spray,

Till the lavrock in the sun

Pours thy rapture down the day.

Silver birch and purple pine,

Crumpled fern and crimson rose,

Flash to feel their beauty thine,

Clasp and fold thee, warm and close:

Every beat and gleam of wings

Holds thee in its bosom furled;

All that chatters, laughs, and sings,

Darts thy sparkle round the world.

Love, so strangely lost and found,

Love, beyond the seas of death,

Love, immortally re-crowned,

Love, who swayest this mortal breath,

Sweetlier to thy lover's ear

Steals the tale that ne'er was told;

Bright eyes, ah, thine arms are near,

Nearer now than e'er of old.