w,
Comes laughing and goes hastening like you.

Beauty is more than hands or face or eyes
Or the long curve that lies
Upon a bed waiting, more than the rise
Of sun among the birds, more than the oar that plies
Under the moon for lovers, more than a tune that buys
Pennies from time. Vision and touch comprise
Yesterday's promise, today's token
Of a fulfillment that shall have no need to be perceived or spoken,
Wherein all love is the award
Poured upon beauty and no heart is broken
And no grief is stored.

For never beauty dies
That lived. Nightly the skies
Assemble stars, the light of hopeful eyes,
And daily brood on the communal breath--
Which we call death.
Nothing is lost. Nothing I have of loveliness
Exceeds a minute part
Of my own loveliness when it shall be fulfilled
With Celia's and all loveliness that lies
In every heart.
All that I have is but the start
And the beginning, the bewildering guess
Of what shall be distilled
Out of my soul by you and you,
Each soul of all souls, till one soul remains
Which every beauty shall imbue
Clean of the differences and pains....
I shall be Celia's everlastingness.

IX

A little hill among New Hampshire hills
Touches more stars than any height I know.
For there the whole earth--like a single being--fills
And expands with heaven.
It is the hill where Celia used to go
To watch Monadnock and the miles that met
In slow-ascending slopes of peace.
She said: "When I am here, I find release
From every petty debt I owe,
The goods I bring with me increase,
The ills are riven
And blown away. And there remains a single debt
Toward all the world for me,
A single duty and one destiny."
"There shall be many births of God
In this humanity,"
She said, "and many crucifixions on the hills,
Before we learn that where Christ trod
We all shall tread; and as he died to give
Himself to us, we too shall die--and live."
"Though slowly knowledge comes, yet in the birth
Is joy," said Celia, "joy
As well as pain:
The clear and clouded beauty of the earth.
.... This I forget in cities. For cities are a great
Impassable gate
Of tumult. But by mountains and by seas I gain
Path after path of peace."

One evening Celia led me, late,
Among the many whispers before rain,
To touch and climb her hill again.
I felt it rise invisible as fate,