How noble, proud, and beautiful!" But she
Who knows him best: "How tender!" So thou art
The river of love to me!
—Heart of my heart,
Dear love and bride is it not so indeed?—
Among your treasures keep this new-pluckt reed.
XII—"MY SONGS ARE ALL OF THEE"
My songs are all of thee, what tho' I sing
Of morning when the stars are yet in sight,
Of evening, or the melancholy night,
Of birds that o'er the reddening waters wing;
Of song, of fire, of winds, or mists that cling
To mountain-tops, of winter all in white,
Of rivers that toward ocean take their flight,
Of summer when the rose is blossoming.
I think no thought that is not thine, no breath
Of life I breathe beyond thy sanctity;
Thou art the voice that silence uttereth,
And of all sound thou art the sense. From thee
The music of my song, and what it saith
Is but the beat of thy heart, throbbed through me.
XIII—AFTER MANY DAYS
Dear heart, I would that after many days,
When we are gone, true lovers in a book
Might find these faithful songs of ours. "O look!"
I hear him murmur while he straightway lays
His finger on the page, and she doth raise
Her eyes to his. Then, like the winter brook
From whose young limbs a sudden summer shook
The fetters, love flows on in sunny ways.
