Kiss and make up—­’tis the wise ancient way;
    Back to my arms, O bountiful deep breast! 
  No more of words that know not what they say;
    To kiss is wisdom—­folly all the rest. 
    Dear loveliness so mercifully pressed
  Against my heart—­I shake with sudden fear
  To think—­to losing thee I came so near.

  Shadows

  Shadows! the only shadows that I know
    Are happy shadows of the light of you,
    The radiance immortal shining through
  Your sea-deep eyes up from the soul below;
    Your shadow, like a rose’s, on the grass
    Where your feet pass.

  The shadow of the dimple in your chin,
    The shadow of the lashes of your eyes,
    As on your cheek, soft as a moth, it lies;
  And, as a church, I softly enter in
    The solemn twilight of your mighty hair,
    Down falling there.

  These are Love’s shadows, Love knows none but these: 
    Shadows that are the very soul of light,
    As morning and the morning blossom bright,
  Or jewelled shadows of moon-haunted seas;
    The darkest shadows in this world of ours
    Are made of flowers.

  After tibullus

  Illius est nobis lege colendus amor

  On her own terms, O lover, must thou take
    The heart’s beloved:  be she kind, ’tis well,
  Cruel, expect no more; not for thy sake
    But for the fire in thee that melts her snows
    For a brief spell
  She loves thee—­“loves” thee!  Though thy heart should break,
    Though thou shouldst lie athirst for her in hell,
      She could not pity thee:  who of the Rose,
  Or of the Moon, asks pity, or return
      Of love for love? and she is even as those. 
  Beauty is she, thou Love, and thou must learn,
    O lover, this: 
  Thine is she for the music thou canst pour
      Through her white limbs, the madness, the deep dream;
    Thine, while thy kiss
      Can sweep her flaming with thee down the stream
    That is not thou nor she but merely bliss;
  The music ended, she is thine no more.

  In her Eternal Beauty bends o’er thee,
    Be thou content;
  She is the evening star in thy hushed lake
      Mirrored,—­be glad;
    A soul-less creature of the element,
      Nor good, nor bad;
  That which thou callest to in the far skies
  Comes to thee in her eyes;
      That thou mayst slake
  Thy love of lilies, lo! her breasts!  Be wise,
  Ask not that she, as thou, should human be,
    She that doth smell so sweet of distant heaven;
    Pity is mortal leaven,
  Dews know it not, nor morning on the hills,
    And who hath yet found pity of the sea
  That blesses, knowing not, and, not knowing, kills;
    And sister unto all of these is she,
  Whose face, as theirs, none reads; whose heart none knows;
    Whose words are as the wind’s