profane
Our inmost feelings,--lest the sanctity
Of Love be lessened in our hearts and we
Nought higher than the common path attain!

The common path were death to us, whose love,
O'erruled by Fate, from earthly hopes debarred,
Must look to Heav'n for sublimer joys
Than those which earth can give, which earth destroys.
Our path is steep, but there is light above,
And Faith can make the roughest way less hard.

VIII

THE HEART OF LOVE

Look in mine eyes, Beloved,--for my tongue
Must never utter what my heart doth claim,--
And read Love there, for Love's forbidden name
Dies on my trembling lips unvoiced, unsung.
Nor sighs, nor tears--the bitter tribute wrung
From hearts of woe--must e'er that love proclaim
For which the world's unpitying heart would blame
Thy pity--though from purest fountains sprung.

Fate and the world, they bid wide oceans roll
Between our yearning hearts and their desire;
Yea, lips they silence, but can ne'er control
The heart of Love, nor quench its sacred fire.
I must not speak; O look into my soul--
There read the message which thou dost require!

IX

"TWIXT STAR AND STAR"

Not here,--not here, where weak conventions mar
Life's hopes and joys, Love's beauty, truth and grace,
Must I come near thee, greet thee face to face,
Pour in thine ear the songs and sighs that are
My heart's best offerings. But in regions far,
Where Love's ethereal pinions may embrace
Beauty divine--in the clear interspace
Of twilight silence betwixt star and star,

And in the smiles of cloudless skies serene,
In Dawn's first blush and Sunset's lingering glow,
And in the glamour of the Moon's chaste beams--
My soul meets thine, and there thine image seen,
More real than life, doth to my lone heart show
Such charms as live in Memory's haunting dreams!

X

THE HIGHER KNIGHTHOOD

A time there was, when for thy beauty's prize--
Hadst thou but deemed my love that prize deserved--
What hope, what faith my daring heart had nerved
For proud achievement and for high emprize!
No Knight, that owned the spell of Beauty's eyes
And wore her sleeve upon his helm, had served
His vows with faith like mine; I ne'er had swerved
One jot from mine for all beneath the skies.

That time is dead, alas! and yet this heart
Is thine, still thine, with Love's high chivalry
And Faith that cannot die; but now i