For, O my God, Thy creatures are so frail,
  Thy bountiful creation is so fair. 
That, drawn before us like the temple veil,
  It hides the Holy Place from thought and care,
Giving man’s eyes instead its sweeping fold,
Rich as with cherub wings and apples wrought of gold.

Purple and blue and scarlet—­shimmering bells
  And rare pomegranates on its broidered rim,
Glorious with chain and fretwork that the swell
  Of incense shakes to music dreamy and dim,
Till on a day comes loss, that God makes gain,
And death and darkness rend the veil in twain.

* * * * *

Ah, sweetest! my beloved! each outward thing
  Recalls my youth, and is instinct with thee;
Brown wood-owls in the dusk, with noiseless wing,
  Float from yon hanger to their haunted tree,
And hoot full softly.  Listening, I regain
A flashing thought of thee with their remembered strain.

I will not pine—­it is the careless brook. 
  These amber sunbeams slanting down the vale;
It is the long tree-shadows, with their look
  Of natural peace, that make my heart to fail: 
The peace of nature—­No, I will not pine—­
But O the contrast ’twixt her face and mine!

And still I changed—­I was a boy no more;
  My heart was large enough to hold my kind,
And all the world.  As hath been oft before
  With youth, I sought, but I could never find
Work hard enough to quiet my self-strife,
And use the strength of action-craving life.

She, too, was changed:  her bountiful sweet eyes
  Looked out full lovingly on all the world. 
O tender as the deeps in yonder skies
  Their beaming! but her rosebud lips were curled
With the soft dimple of a musing smile,
Which kept my gaze, but held me mute the while.

A cast of bees, a slowly moving wain,
  The scent of bean-flowers wafted up a dell,
Blue pigeons wheeling over fields of grain,
  Or bleat of folded lamb, would please her well;
Or cooing of the early coted dove;—­
She sauntering mused of these; I, following, mused of love.

With her two lips, that one the other pressed
  So poutingly with such a tranquil air,
With her two eyes, that on my own would rest
  So dream-like, she denied my silent prayer,
Fronted unuttered words and said them nay,
And smiled down love till it had nought to say.

The words that through mine eyes would clearly shine
  Hovered and hovered on my lips in vain;
If after pause I said but “Eglantine,”
  She raised to me her quiet eyelids twain,
And looked me this reply—­look calm, yet bland—­
“I shall not know, I will not understand.”

Yet she did know my story—­knew my life
  Was wrought to hers with bindings many and strong
That I, like Israel, served for a wife,
  And for the love I bare her thought not long,
But only a few days, full quickly told,
My seven years’ service strict as his of old.