As anguish, for supreme expression prest, Borrows its saddest tongue from jest, Thou hast of absence so create A presence more importunate;And thy voice pleads its sweetest suit When it is mute.
I thank the once accursed star Which did me teach To make of Silence my familiar, Who hath the rich reversion of thy speech, Since the most charming sounds thy thought can wear, Cast off, fall to that pale attendant's share;And thank the gift which made my mind A shadow-world, wherethrough the shadows wind Of all the loved and lovely of my kind.
Like a maiden Saxon, folden, As she flits, in moon-drenched mist;Whose curls streaming flaxen-golden, By the misted moonbeams kist, Dispread their filmy floating silk Like honey steeped in milk:
So, vague goldenness remote, Through my thoughts I watch thee float.
When the snake summer casts her blazoned skin We find it at the turn of autumn's path, And think it summer that rewinded hath, Joying therein;And this enamouring slough of thee, mine elf, I take it for thyself;Content.Content? Yea, title it content.
The very loves that belt thee must prevent My love, I know, with their legitimacy:
As the metallic vapours, that are swept Athwart the sun, in his light intercept The very hues Which THEIR conflagrant elements effuse.
But, my love, my heart, my fair, That only I should see thee rare, Or tent to the hid core thy rarity, -This were a mournfulness more piercing far Than that those other loves my own must bar, Or thine for others leave thee none for me.
But on a day whereof I think, One shall dip his hand to drink In that still water of thy soul, And its imaged tremors race Over thy joy-troubled face, As the intervolved reflections roll From a shaken fountain's brink, With swift light wrinkling its alcove.
From the hovering wing of Love The warm stain shall flit roseal on thy cheek, Then, sweet blushet! whenas he, The destined paramount of thy universe, Who has no worlds to sigh for, ruling thee, Ascends his vermeil throne of empery, One grace alone I seek.