Our Love

OUR LOVE’S A PLACE

WHERE I NO LONGER LIVE

Our love’s a place where I no longer live;

That was a home, and now is just a house.

I went back in my heart the other day,

But nothing in there struck me as my own.

Strange how life moves on, and what we cherish

Turns to something alien in our hands.

And later, when we try to comprehend it,

It fades into the twilight of our tears.

I woke again upon a sunny morning,

Alive to what I hoped would be a song.

You were yesterday, which I remembered

As though it were a year or two ago.

Down to the depths of the sea

Down, down, down.

Down to the depths of the sea.

She sits at her wheel in the humming town,

Singing most joyfully.

Hark, what she sings: "O joy, O joy,

For the humming street, and the child with its toy.

For the priest, and the bell, and the holy well.

For the wheel where I spun,

And the blessed light of the sun."

And so she sings her fill,

Singing most joyfully,

Till the shuttle falls from her hand,

And the whizzing wheel stands still.

She steals to the window, and looks at the sand;

And over the sand at the sea;

And her eyes are set in a stare;

And anon there breaks a sigh,

And anon there drops a tear,

From a sorrow-clouded eye,

And a heart sorrow-laden,

A long, long sigh.

For the cold strange eyes of a little Mermaiden,

And the gleam of her golden hair.

Bride of Quietness

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,

Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape

Of deities or mortals, or of both,

In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

AFTER LOVE AND FEAR

After love and fear, there’s pride;

After tears, the night;

After all the words are gone,

A chair with just one light.

After memories, the dream

That you will come home safe;

After sleep, another day

Of waiting for my life.

After hope, the happiness

Of thinking of your love;

After moments of despair

A stone no thought can move.

After all the sacrifice,

The hunger and the pain,

The passions and the promises,

The losses and the gains,

There’s nothing but my love for you,

Which waits upon the wind?

To bring you from the barricades

That now you must defend.

DO NOT LOVE ME YET

Do not love me yet, for I

Am still a slender moon,

A scimitar about the heart

Too sharp to touch too soon.

Before I’m touched I need to grow

More full in golden light;

I need to smile upon my earth

And rule some patch of night.

I need to know what roads and fields

Lie in my domain

And dull my brand new ecstasies

With sophomoric pain.

I need the love of some blank boy

As cold and dark as me,

That we might grope in ignorance

And fear of what might be.

And then, when I’m a silver bowl

And know what I can hold,

Then, then, perhaps, we could try love

If you are not too old

you & I

You're still the same as you've ever been

In my mind's eye, though far removed

From yourself the very image of you;

That I know not the man, nor need to know,

By whose arrow we two shall victim be;

And suffer as much as he alone hath suffered

At the expense of night's ink, all wrapped in darkness,

Which in words, who hath eyes enough to see,

Where uncertain scope of things most abound,

Is yet by one single ray of light revealed,

Whereupon I myself from myself should hide.

So I, my promise, hath kept, not by words,

But by false pretense to make believe it,

What exists not but in self-created illusion,

Unknown, unseen secret of invisible world;

For words oft deceive us, bereaved of light,

When with me thy much quoted tale is writ,

I think not on thee, more or less than mine,

While in such thoughts I spend time with thee,

Love! how divided we live, but together die!

What passion cannot Music raise and quell

What passion cannot Music raise and quell!

When Jubal struck the corded shell,

His list'ning brethren stood around,

The trumpet's loud clangour

Excites us to arms,

With shrill notes of anger

And mortal alarms.

The double double double beat

Of the thund'ring drum

Cries, Hark! the foes come;

Charge, charge, 'tis too late to retreat.

The soft complaining flute

In dying notes discovers

The woes of hopeless lovers,

Whose dirge is whisper'd by the warbling lute.

Sharp violins proclaim

Their jealous pangs, and desperation,

Fury, frantic indignation,

Depth of pains, and height of passion,

For the fair, disdainful dame.

But oh! what art can teach,

What human voice can reach,

The sacred organ's praise?

Notes inspiring holy love,

Notes that wing their heavenly ways

To mend the choirs above.