QUEST AND REQUITAL

Sweet under swooning blue and mellow mist

September waves of forest overflow

The hills with crimson, amaranth and gold.

Winds warm with the memory of scented hours

Dead Summer gathers in her leafy lap,

Rustle the distance with dim murmurings

That sink upon the air as soft as shades

Dropt from the overleaning clouds to earth;

While golden-rod and sedge and aster hushed

In sunny silence and the oblivion

Of life drawn from the insentient veins of Time,

Await the searing swoon of Autumn's reign.

It is a day when death must seem as birth,

And birth as death; and life — till love comes — pain.

These are the leafy hills and listless vales

Of iridescent Autumn — this the oak

Against whose lichened bole I leant and looked

Away the sunny hours of afternoon.

Here are the bitter-sweet and elder sprays

I fingered, dreaming to the muted flow

Of breezes overhead — and here the word

I wrote unwittingly upon the soil.

How long ago it was I cannot tell:

The loneliness of unrequited love

Lies like a blank eternity between

Those hours and these I hear slip thro my heart.

I only know all days I've ever seen

Must seem now of some other life apart!

“Will you let any moment dip its wing

Into your heart and find no love of me

To tint with deathless Dream” — he said — “and Spring,

Its flight to the dim bourne of memory?

Will you have any grief that can forget

How grief should find forgetfulness in love?

And since your soul in my soul's zone is set

Will it sometimes ask other spheres to rove

Where touch and voice of me shall not be met?

Ah no! in all the underdeeps of Death

Or overheights of Life it still shall be

At tryst with mine thro moan or ecstasy.

In all!”... Yet ere a year he'll draw no breath

But is another's!— Will God let it be?

All day I've bent my heart beneath the yoke

Of goading toil, remembering to forget,

To still upon my lips his kiss that woke

Me in elysian love one word has broke —

One stinging word of severance and regret.

All day I've blotted from my eyes his face,

But now at evening tide it comes again,

And memories into my darkened soul

Rush as the stars into high heaven's space.

As the bright stars! But, ah, tomorrow! when

Once more I must forget and see life's goal,

That was so green, with sering laurel hung.

Tomorrow and tomorrow! till is wrung

Peace from the piteous hours I strive among!

I say unto all hearts that cannot rest

For want of love, for beating loud and lonely,

Pray the great Mercy-God to give you only

Love that is passionless within the breast.

Pray that it may not be a haunting fire,

A vision that shall steal insatiably

All beauteous content, all sweet desire,

From faith and dream, star, flower, and song, and sea.

But seek that soul and soul may meet together

Knowing they have forever been but one —

Meet and be surest when ill's chartless weather

Drives blinding gales of doubt across their sun.

Pray — pray! lost love uptorn shall seem as nether

Hell-hate and rage beyond oblivion.

You say that love then led us — you and me?

I say‘ twas hate, that wore love's wanting eyes:

Hate that I could not tear away the lies

That wrapped you with their silken sorcery.

Hate that for you I could not open skies

Where beauty lives of her own loveliness;

That God would give me no omnipotence

To purge and mould anew your soul's numb sense.

Aye, hate that I could love you not tho love

Pent in me ached with passion-born distress —

While thro unfathomable dark the Prize

Seemed sinking, as my soul, from heaven above.

Love, say you? love? and hate rent us apart?

I tell you hate alone so tears the heart.

God who can bind the stars eternally

With but a breath of spirit speech, a thought;

Who can within earth's arms lay the mad sea

Unseverably, and count it as sheer naught;

With his All-might could bind not you and me.

For tho He pressed us heart to burning heart

And set then to the passion that enthralls

His sanction, still our souls stood e'er apart,

As aliens beating fierce against the walls

Of dark unsympathy that would upstart.

Stood aliens, aye! and would tho we should meet,

Beyond the oblivion of unnumbered births,

Upon some world where Time cannot repeat

The feeblest syllable that once was earth's.