Poems (Victor)/Beautiful Soul
BEAUTIFUL SOUL.
Stay, Soul Beautiful, stay, oh, stay!
Listen again to my crying, dear;
Pause even while pursuing your way
To your home in heaven's most shining sphere.
Beautiful Soul, how came you so fair?
Did God when He made you leave out sin,—
With so little of earth and so much of air
That the dust fell away from the spirit within?
As a drop of dew in its delicate sphere
Holds imprisoned a globe of the morning light,
And exhaling frees to the amosphere
The molecule of sun it has stayed in its flight,
So you lived in your beautiful body, Sweet,
And shone through its white and dainty mould;
So you passed away from world's toil and heat
To the glory that gathered you in its fold.
And I? Will my soul when it is free
Discover the print of your spirit feet,
And follow and find? O ecstacy,
To come where you are, my Sweet, my Sweet!
Drop down along your shimmering way
The golden dust of your shining wings,
And haste not too much, but pause and stay
While my soul essays its journeyings,
For, dearest Dear, you must not forget,
Because you're in heaven, and I on earth,
The sweet love bond that binds us yet,
And what to me is its meaning and worth:
It means that no matter where you may be—
But I know where you are there must be bliss—
To no other heaven can my spirit flee,
Beautiful Soul, but only to this.
And perhaps were it not that you are there,
For me to desire, and seek, and gain,
O my Sweet, my Sweet, I should fail to dare
The heights you would help me to attain.
Leave me, along the wondrous way,
Some token my soul may understand;
From your lambent vesture part a ray,
Or loosen within your shining hand
Some radiant blossoms to fall along
Your ariel path, like stars new born;
Tune the motionless ether to a song;
Or breathe through it fragrance like the morn:
But O, Soul Beautiful, on your way
In and out 'mong the spheres of light,
Be sure that I am not left to stray,
When to seek you, and find you I take my flight.
I'll come as a perfume, a color, a thought,
And touch you with fingers more light than a look,
'Till you tremble and thrill, and I know you have caught
The remembrance of earth, and the love you forsook.
I will surely follow, through doubt and fear,
To sit at your feet in your bowers of bliss;
Beautiful Soul, my dearest Dear,
Fly not too far, lest the way I miss.
For the universe is long and wide,
And your elements so etherial fine,
If by any chance I should pass aside.
My heaven would be lost in seeking thine.