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.