p. 23 p. 25LOVE. p. 25 Love comes divinely, gladdening mortal life, As sunrise dawns upon the gaze of one Bewildered in some outland waste, and lost: Who, lonely faint and shuddering, through the night Heard savage creatures nigh; and far-off moan Of tempests on the wind. Auroral joy Flushes the brow of childhood, warms his cheek To rosier redness at the name of Love; And earlier thoughts awake in darkness strive; As unfledged nestlings move their sightless heads At sound, toward a fair world to them unknown. Young Hope scales azure mountain heights to gaze, In Love’s first golden and delicious dream. He sees the earth a maze of tempting paths, p. 26For blissful sauntering mid the crowded flowers And music of the rills. No ambushed wrongs, Or thwarting storms there baffle and surprise; But lingering, man treads long an odorous way; And at the close, with Love clasped hand in hand, Sets in proud glory: thence to rise anon With Love beyond the stars and rest in heaven. p. 26 Man, nerved by Love, can steadily endure Clash of opposing interests; perplexed web Of crosses that distracting clog advance: In thickest storm of contest waxes stronger At momentary thought of home, of her, His gracious wife, and bright-faced joys. To him The wrinkled patriarch, who sits and suns His shrunken form beneath the boughs he climbed A lissom boy, whence comes that brooding smile, Whose secret lifts his cheeks, and overflows His sight with tender dew? What through his frame p. 27Melts languor sweeter than approaching sleep To one made weary by a hard day’s toil? It is the memory of primal love, Whose visionary splendour steeped his life In hues of heaven; and which grown open day, Revealing perilous falls, his steps confined Within the pathways to the noblest end. Now following this dimmed glory, tired, his soul Haunts ever the mysterious gates of Death; And waits in patient reverence till his doom Unfolding them fulfils immortal Love. p. 27 As from some height, on a wild day of cloud, A wanderer, chilled and worn, perchance beholds Move toward him through the landscape soaked in gloom A golden beam of light; creating lakes, And verdant pasture, farms, and villages; And touching spires atop to flickering flame; Disclosing herds of sober feeding kine; And brightening on its way the woods to song; p. 28As he, that wanderer, brightens when the
Prev.
Back
Top