be dashed and spilled, all radiance flung
Beyond experience, every benison dream,
Treasured and mystically crescent there.

O, who will shield me from her? Who will place
A veil between me and the fierce in-throng
Of her inexorable benedicite?
See, I have loved her well and been with her!
Through tragic twilights when the stricken sea
Groveled with fear, or when she made her throne
In imminent cities built of gorgeous winds
And paved with lightnings; or when the sobering stars
Would lead her home 'mid wealth of plundered May
Along the violet slopes of evensong.
Of all the sights that starred the dreamy year,
For me one sight stood peerless and apart:
Bright rivers tacit; low hills prone and dumb;
Forests that hushed their tiniest voice to hear;
Skies for the unutterable advent robed
In purple like the opening iris buds;
And by some lone expectant pool, one tree
Whose gray boughs shivered with excess of awe,--
As with preluding gush of amber light,
And herald trumpets softly lifted through,
Across the palpitant horizon marge
Crocus-filleted came the singing moon.
Out of her changing lights I wove my youth
A place to dwell in, sweet and spiritual,
And all the bitter years of my exile
My heart has called afar off unto her.
Lo, after many days love finds its own!
The futile adorations, the waste tears,
The hymns that fluttered low in the false dawn,
She has uptreasured as a lover's gifts;
They are the mystic garment that she wears
Against the bridal, and the crocus flowers
She twined her brow with at the going forth;
They are the burden of the song she made
In coming through the quiet fields of space,
And breathe between her passion-parted lips
Calling me out along the flowering road
Which summers through the dimness of the sea.

Hark, where the deep feels round its thousand shores
To find remembered respite, and far drawn
Through weed-strewn shelves and crannies of the coast
The myriad silence yearns to myriad speech.
O sea that yearns a day, shall thy tongues be
So eloquent, and heart, shall all thy tongues
Be dumb to speak thy longing? Say I hold
Life as a broken jewel in my hand,
And fain would buy a little love with it
For comfort, say I fain would make it shine
Once in remembering eyes ere it be dust,-