I ONLY KNOW
The mysteries and miracles I've never understood—
I only know that Love is great and wise and strong and good;
I only know that I am naught beside the seraphim,
And that all the host of heaven by the side of Love is dim.
I only know the grandest star that gleams on mortal sight
In Love's eternal vision is a fleck of dying light;
That all the glorious wonder our midnight sky unfolds
Is nothing to the grandeur that the eye of Love beholds.
I only know our universe, all limitless and grand,
Is as a sea of atoms in the hollow of Love's hand;
That all our vanished eons that have rolled through time away,
And all our coming ages, are to Love a single day.
I only know that dreamings the to us seem all sublime,
The soul of mortal music, and the heart of earthly rhyme,
Our farthest sweep of wisdom, all our thought's divinest light,
To Love is as a lantern in the fog-clouds of the night.
I only know my mission here is finite; that the breath
I draw today tomorrow flies all swiftly unto death;
And yet I feel that I am part of the undying whole,
A kinsman and a comrade of Love's never-resting soul.
And this I know, whatever comes, or early yet or late,
Somewhere, sometime, I shall arise a master over fate;
For I have seen it written on my Mother Nature's breast,
And Love has flashed it to me from the dreamlands of the blest.
✤ ✤ ✤ ✤
ONE LAST KISS
Lift your glowing lips to mine, my darling; kiss me once again;
Kiss me, though my heart be broken when our lips are torn in twain;
Kiss me, though my soul should waken, weeping, evermore to dwell
In the land of utmost grieving, as a citizen of hell.
Kiss me once again, my darling, though my soul forever dies
With the dying of the love-light from your clear and splendid eyes;
Lift your lips to mine and kiss me, though the kiss leave desolate
Every palace I have builded in the dreamland of my fate.
—21—
