Isolation: To Marguerite
We were apart; yet, day by day,
I bade my heart more constant be.
I bade it keep the world away,
And grow a home for only thee;
Nor feared but thy love likewise grew,
Like mine, each day, more tried, more true.
The fault was grave! I might have known,
What far too soon, alas! I learned -
The heart can bind itself alone,
And faith may oft be unreturned.
Self-swayed out feelings ebb and swell -
Thou lov'st no more - Farewell! Farewell!
Farewell! - and thou, thou lonely heart,
Which never yet without remorse
Even for a moment didst depart
From thy remote and sphered course
To haunt the place where passions reign -
Back to thy solitude again!
Back! with the conscious thrill of shame
Which Luna felt, that summer night,
Flash through her pure immortal frame,
When she forsook the starry height
To hang over Endymion's sleep
Upon the pine-grown Latmian steep.
Yet she, chaste queen, had never proved
How vain a thing is mortal love,
Wandering in heaven, far removed.
But thou hast long had place to prove
This truth - to prove, and make thine own:
"This has been, shalt be, art, alone."
Or, if not quite alone, yet they
Which touch thee are unmating things -
Ocean and clouds and night and day;
Lorn autumns and triumphant springs;
And life, and others' joy and pain,
And love, if love, of happier men.
Longing
Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.
Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times,
A messenger from radiant climes,
And smile on thy new world, and be
As kind to others as to me!
Or, as thou never cam'st in sooth,
Come now, and let me dream in truth;
And part my hairm and kiss my brow,
And say: My love! why sufferest thou?
Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.
Too Late
Each on his own strict line we move,
And some find death ere they find love.
So far apart their lives are thrown
From the twin soul that halves their own.
And sometimes, by still harder fate,
The lovers meet, but meet too late.
- Thy heart is mine! - True, true! ah, true!
Then, love, thy hand! - Ah, no! adieu!
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