showers, And glancing sideways watch Their children run to catch A rainbow with the laughing Hours.”

I watched in awkward wonder for a time As there she listless lay and sang my rhyme, Wrapped up in fabrics of an Indian clime She seemed a Bird of Paradise Languid from the traversed skies.

A dawn-bright snowy peak her smile . . . Strange I Should dawdle near her grace admiringly, When love alarmed and challenged sympathy, p. 69Announced in chills of creeping fear Danger surely threatening near.

p. 69

I shrank from searching the abyss I felt Yawned by; whose verge voluptuous blossoms belt With dazzling hues:—she speaks! I fall and melt, One sacred moment drawn to rest, Deeply weeping in her breast:

Within the throbbing treasure wept? But brief Those loosening tears of blessed deep relief, That won triumphant ransom from my grief, While loving words and comfort she Breathed in angel tones to me.

Our visions met, when pityingly she flung Her passionate arms about me, kissing clung, Close kisses, stifling kisses; till each wrung, With welded mouths, the other’s bliss Out in one long sighing kiss.

p. 70Love-flower that burst in kisses and sweet tears, Scattering its roseate dreamflakes, disappears Into cold truth: for, loud with brazen jeers, That bell’s toll, clanging in my brain, Beat me, loth, to earth again:

p. 70

Where, looking on my Love’s endangered state, Wrought by keen anguish mad, I struck at fate, Prostrating mockingly in sport or hate The aspirations, darkling, we Cherish and resolve to be.

She spoke, but sharply checked; then as her zone A lady’s hands would clasp, My Lady’s own Pressed at her yielding side; her solemn tone And forward eager face implored Me to kneel where she adored.

Despite her pain, with tender woman’s phrase She solaced me, whose part it was to raise Anew the gladness to her weakened gaze, p. 71And wisely in man’s firmness be To my drooping vine a tree.

p. 71

But no; sunk, dwindled, dwarfed, and mean, beside Her couch I sitting saw her eyes grow wide With awe, and heard her voice move as the tide Of steady music rich and calm In some high cathedral psalm.

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