In Absence

I.

The storm that snapped our fate's one ship in twain

Hath blown my half o' the wreck from thine apart.

O Love! O Love! across the gray-waved main

To thee-ward strain my eyes, my arms, my heart.

I ask my God if e'en in His sweet place,

Where, by one waving of a wistful wing,

My soul could straightway tremble face to face

With thee, with thee, across the stellar ring —

Yea, where thine absence I could ne'er bewail

Longer than lasts that little blank of bliss

When lips draw back, with recent pressure pale,

To round and redden for another kiss —

   Would not my lonesome heart still sigh for thee

   What time the drear kiss-intervals must be?

 II.

So do the mottled formulas of Sense

Glide snakewise through our dreams of Aftertime;

So errors breed in reeds and grasses dense

That bank our singing rivulets of rhyme.

By Sense rule Space and Time; but in God's Land

Their intervals are not, save such as lie

Betwixt successive tones in concords bland

Whose loving distance makes the harmony.

Ah, there shall never come 'twixt me and thee

Gross dissonances of the mile, the year;

But in the multichords of ecstasy

Our souls shall mingle, yet be featured clear,

   And absence, wrought to intervals divine,

   Shall part, yet link, thy nature's tone and mine.

 III.

Look down the shining peaks of all my days

Base-hidden in the valleys of deep night,

So shalt thou see the heights and depths of praise

My love would render unto love's delight;

For I would make each day an Alp sublime

Of passionate snow, white-hot yet icy-clear,

— One crystal of the true-loves of all time

Spiring the world's prismatic atmosphere;

And I would make each night an awful vale

Deep as thy soul, obscure as modesty,

With every star in heaven trembling pale

O'er sweet profounds where only Love can see.

   Oh, runs not thus the lesson thou hast taught? —

   When life's all love, 'tis life:  aught else, 'tis naught.

 IV.

Let no man say, `He at his lady's feet

Lays worship that to Heaven alone belongs;

Yea, swings the incense that for God is meet

In flippant censers of light lover's songs.'

Who says it, knows not God, nor love, nor thee;

For love is large as is yon heavenly dome:

In love's great blue, each passion is full free

To fly his favorite flight and build his home.

Did e'er a lark with skyward-pointing beak

Stab by mischance a level-flying dove?

Wife-love flies level, his dear mate to seek:

God-love darts straight into the skies above.

   Crossing, the windage of each other's wings

   But speeds them both upon their journeyings.