, and Love is Love!
Methinks He hid this sweet love favor
That I might find it--my treasure-trove.

{54}

Sure in this realm of Sense and Time
Passes an endless pantomime
Of life and thought, whose tone and color
A shadow is of a heavenly prime.

The rose unfolds from the unseen;
It was not to the senses keen;
'Tis broken to the vision softly,
A crown of crowns of the summer's green.

In hushed and breathless Beauty's name,
From out the veiled deeps as flame
It comes, a thing of sense, of spirit,
And passeth out by the way it came.

{55}

All day an ashen light serene
Has brooded o'er this longed-for scene,
Its tints and damask flush all hiding,
As if obscured by a dusky screen.

Here when a child I used to lie
For hours, and watch the clouds go by,
See the black shadows climb the mountain
Or safely ride o'er the billowy rye.

O Beauty, shy as sylvan run,
Demure as some sweet-hooded nun,
And wrapt about with grey of gloaming,
Unveil thy face to the sinking sun.

{56}

Never before has my ear heard
A sweeter music, passion stirred,
Nor depth and purity so azurn,
Of breathing dawn and of morning bird.

She comes, in heyday of her blood,
Over the groves and waiting flood!
The air is vital with her presence,
And banners wave from the woodbine's bud.

AEolian sylphs touch soft their lutes,
Brooks tinkle, tinkle past the roots,
As Beauty, hidden in the cover,
Fingers the stops of her melting flutes.

{57}

Dimly beheld, thou excellent,
Ideal of grace! 'tis ravishment
To breathe thy atmosphere, O Beauty,
Whene'er thou stirr'st in thy greening tent.

I cannot see thee as thou art,
Nor trace thy goings but in part;
O dearer thus, like starry music
Half heard, that thrills with its string my heart.

If thou shouldst part thy sheeny veil
And strike thy fires, my heart would quail
Beneath the eye of naked glory,
The molten sun, as the moon, be pale.

{58}

Fair as the light on fire-tipt hills,
From out her hollow hand she spills
The pale and powdery moonbeams, sifting
O'er sleeping farms and the winking rills.

The silvered leaves smile in their sleep;
Headlands their hoary watches keep;
The glimmering ships the moonglade furrow--
The path where beauty fore-walks the deep.

And now the powdery beam is thrown
On margueri