I.
LOVE AND DEATH.
UPON the threshold of his guarded home
Stands Love the child.
A thousand roses bloom above his head
With rain of dewy petals white and red;
All fair and joyous things themselves array
To deck and soften for dear Love the way.
He stands where often he has stood before;
But now his face is pale, his eyes all wild,
A strange and boding tread has caught his ear,
An awful, hovering shape sweeps into view,
And all his soul is rent with wrath and fear—
What can Love do?
Poor Love! brave Love! he nerves his feeble arm,
He grasps his bow;
The dreadful guest has seized the rainbow wings.
In vain Love strives with tears and shudderings,
In vain he lifts appealing eyes of prayer;
There is no pity or relenting there.
No power has Love to deprecate or charm,
Vain are his puny wiles against this foe;
The roses wither in the icy breath
Which eddies the defenceless portals through,
And, brushing Love aside, in passes Death—
What can Love do?
II.
LOVE AND LIFE.
THE way is steep, and hard to tread, and drear;
Piercing and bleak the icy atmosphere.
My feet are bruised and bleeding, and my eyes
Can only with dim questionings seek the skies.
How could I walk a step without thine aid?
How face the awful silence unafraid?
How bear the star-rays and the moon-glance cold?
Loose not thine hold!
Earth and its kindly ways seem very far,
And yet the shining skies no nearer are;
Except for thee, dear Love, I could not go
Over the hard rocks, the untrodden snow,
But had sat down content with lower things,
With scanty crumbs and waning water-springs,—
A wingèd thing whose wings might not unfold:
Loose not thine hold!
Loose not thine hold! let me feel all the while
The quickening impulse of thy tender smile
Luring me on, and catch, as if in trance,
The lovely reverence of thy downward glance,
The pity and the splendor of thy face,
The recognition like a soft embrace:
Until my feet shall tread the streets of gold,
Loose not thy hold!
III.
PAOLO È FRANCESCA.
THE mighty blast which sweeps and girdles hell
Drives us before it, whither none may tell.
No pause, no goal, no time of respite,—well,
We are together!
Circling forever in a dark abyss,
Linked by a fate as wild as passionless,
One only thing is left us,—it is this:
We are together!