To this, and called it love, and seemed content!
Love! Love! ’Tis we who lose it know it best!
Love! Love! It gleams all gold and marble white
High on the headlands of our troubled lives
Pure as this golden temple of the Sun
To twilit eyes; by day a luring star
That leads our sea-worn hearts from strait to strait,
By night a fire and solace thro’ the cold;
Yet standing as this temple stands, a door
To worlds mysterious, to alien things,
And all the glory of the waiting gods!
Love! Love! It is the blue of bluest skies;
The farthest green of waters touched with sun!
It is the calm of Evening’s earliest star
And yet the tumult of most troubled tides!
It is the frail original of things,
A timorous flame that once half-feared the light,
Yet, loosened, sweeps the world, consuming Time
And tinsel empires grim with blood and war!
It is a hostage lent of Death, that Life
Once more in times afar may find its lost!
It is the ache and utter loneliness
Of wintry lands made wonderful with Spring!
Music it is, and song, regret and tears;
The rose upon the tomb of fleeting youth;
The one red wine of life, that on the lip
Of Thirst turns not to ashes!
Of Thirst turns not to ashes! Change and time
And sorrow kneel to it, for at its touch
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