And shook my heart to think she comes once more; But even then I heard her close the door, The gates of Heaven are closed, and she is gone. 3. There is none like her, none. Nor will be when our summers have deceased. O, art thou sighing for Lebanon In the long breeze that streams to thy delicious East, Sighing for Lebanon, Dark cedar, tho' thy limbs have here increased, Upon a pastoral slope as fair, And looking to the South, and fed With honey'd rain and delicate air, And haunted by the starry head Of her whose gentle will has changed my fate, And made my life a perfumed altar-flame; Forefathers of the thornless garden, there Shadowing the snow-limb'd Eve from whom she came. 4. Here will I lie, while these long branches sway, And you fair stars that crown a happy day Go in and out as if at merry play, Who am no more so all forlorn, As when it seem'd far better to be born To labor and the mattock-harden'd hand, Than nursed at ease and brought to understand A sad astrology, the boundless plan That makes you tyrants in your iron skies, Innumerable, pitiless, passionless eyes, Cold fires, yet with power to burn and brand His nothingness into man. 5. But now shine on, and what care I, Who in this stormy gulf have found a pearl The counter-charm of space and hollow sky, And do accept my madness, and would die To save from some slight shame one simple girl. 6. Would die; for sullen-seeming Death may give More life to Love than is or ever was In our low world, where yet 't is sweet to live. Let no one ask me how it came to pass; It seems that I am happy, that to me A livelier emerald twinkles in the grass, A purer sapphire melts into the sea. 7. Not die; but live a life of truest breath, Maud made my Maud by that long lover's kiss, Life of my life, wilt thou not answer this? • The dusky strand of Death inwoven here With dear Love's tie, makes Love himself more dear.' 8. Is that enchanted moan only the swell Of the long waves that roll in yonder bay? And hark the clock within, the silver knell Of twelve sweet hours that past in bridal white, But now by this my love has closed her sight May nothing there her maiden grace affright! My own heart's heart and ownest own, farewell. And ye meanwhile far over moor and fell Beat, happy stars, timing with things below, Beat with my heart more blest than heart can tell, Blest, but for some dark under-current woe That seems to draw but it shall not be so: |