The Victories of Love, and Other Poems

XIII.  FROM LADY CLITHEROE TO EMILY GRAHAM

My dearest Niece, I’m charm’d to hearThe scenery’s fine at Windermere,And glad a six-weeks’ wife defersIn the least to wisdom not yet hers.But, Child, I’ve no advice to give!Rules only make it hard to live.And where’s the good of having beenWell taught from seven to seventeen,If, married, you may not leave off,And say, at last, ‘I’m good enough!’Weeding out folly, still leave some.It gives both lightness and aplomb.We know, however wise by rule,Woman is still by nature fool;And men have sense to like her allThe more when she is natural.’Tis true, that if we choose, we canMock to a miracle the man;But iron in the fire red hot,Though ’tis the heat, the fire ’tis not:And who, for such a feint, would pledgeThe babe’s and woman’s privilege,No duties and a thousand rights?Besides, defect love’s flow incites,As water in a well will runOnly the while ’tis drawn upon.   ‘Point de culte sans mystère,’ you say,‘And what if that should die away?’Child, never fear that either couldPull from Saint Cupid’s face the hood.The follies natural to eachSurpass the other’s moral reach.Just think how men, with sword and gun,Will really fight, and never run;And all in sport: they would have died,For sixpence more, on the other side!A woman’s heart must ever warmAt such odd ways: and so we charmBy strangeness which, the more they mark,The more men get into the dark.The marvel, by familiar life,Grows, and attaches to the wifeBy whom it grows.  Thus, silly Girl,To John you’ll always be the pearlIn the oyster of the universe;And, though in time he’ll treat you worse,He’ll love you more, you need not doubt,And never, never find you out!   My Dear, I know that dreadful thoughtThat you’ve been kinder than you ought.It almost makes you hate him!  Yet’Tis wonderful how men forget,And how a merciful ProvidenceDeprives our husbands of all senseOf kindness past, and makes them deemWe always were what now we seem.For their own good we must, you knowHowever plain the way we go,Still make it strange with stratagem;And instinct tells us that, to them,’Tis always right to bate their price.Yet I must say they’re rather nice,And, oh, so easily taken inTo cheat them almost seems a sin!And, Dearest, ’twould be most unfairTo John your feelings to compareWith his, or any man’s; for sheWho loves at all loves always; he,Who loves far more, loves yet by fits,And, when the wayward wind remitsTo blow, his feelings faint and dropLike forge-flames when the bellows stop.Such things don’t trouble you at allWhen once you know they’re natural.   My love to John; and, pray, my Dear,Don’t let me see you for a year;Unless, indeed, ere then you’ve learn’dThat Beauties wed are blossoms turn’dTo unripe codlings, meant to dwellIn modest shadow hidden well,Till this green stage again permuteTo glow of flowers with good of fruit.I will not have my patience triedBy your absurd new-married pride,That scorns the world’s slow-gather’d senseTies up the hands of Providence,Rules babes, before there’s hope of one,Better than mothers e’er have done,And, for your poor particular,Neglects delights and graces farBeyond your crude and thin conceit.Age has romance almost as sweetAnd much more generous than thisOf yours and John’s.  With all the blissOf the evenings when you coo’d with himAnd upset home for your sole whim,You might have envied, were you wise,The tears within your Mother’s eyes,Which, I dare say, you did not see.But let that pass!  Yours yet will be,I hope, as happy, kind, and trueAs lives which now seem void to you.Have you not seen shop-painters pasteTheir gold in sheets, then rub to wasteFull half, and, lo, you read the name?Well, Time, my Dear, does much the sameWith this unmeaning glare of love.   But, though you yet may much improve,In marriage, be it still confess’d,There’s little merit at the best.Some half-a-dozen lives, indeed,Which else would not have had the need,Get food and nurture as the priceOf antedated Paradise;But what’s that to the varied wantSuccour’d by Mary, your dear Aunt,Who put the bridal crown thrice by,For that of which virginity,So used, has hope?  She sends her love,As usual with a proof thereof—Papa’s discourse, which you, no doubt,Heard none of, neatly copied outWhilst we were dancing.  All are well,Adieu, for there’s the Luncheon Bell.

THE WEDDING SERMON

1

   The truths of Love are like the seaFor clearness and for mystery.Of that sweet love which, startling, wakesMaiden and Youth, and mostly breaksThe word of promise to the ear,But keeps it, after many a year,To the full spirit, how shall I speak?My memory with age is weak,And I for hopes do oft suspectThe things I seem to recollect.Yet who but must remember well’Twas this made heaven intelligibleAs motive, though ’twas small the powerThe heart might have, for even an hour.To hold possession of the heightOf nameless pathos and delight!

2

   In Godhead rise, thither flow backAll loves, which, as they keep or lack.In their return, the course assign’d,Are virtue or sin.  Love’s every kind.Lofty or low, of spirit or sense,Desire is, or benevolence.He who is fairer, better, higherThan all His works, claims all desire,And in His Poor, His Proxies, asksOur whole benevolence: He tasks,Howbeit, His People by their powers;And if, my Children, you, for hours,Daily, untortur’d in the heart,Can worship, and time’s other partGive, without rough recoils of sense,To the claims ingrate of indigence,Happy are you, and fit to beWrought to rare heights of sanctity,For the humble to grow humbler at.But if the flying spirit falls flat,After the modest spell of prayerThat saves the day from sin and care,And the upward eye a void descries,And praises are hypocrisies,And, in the soul, o’erstrain’d for grace,A godless anguish grows apace;Or, if impartial charitySeems, in the act, a sordid lie,Do not infer you cannot pleaseGod, or that He His promisesPostpones, but be content to loveNo more than He accounts enough.Account them poor enough who wantAny good thing which you can grant;And fathom well the depths of lifeIn loves of Husband and of Wife,Child, Mother, Father; simple keysTo what cold faith calls mysteries.

3

   The love of marriage claims, aboveAll other kinds, the name of love,As perfectest, though not so highAs love which Heaven with single eyeConsiders.  Equal and entire,Therein benevolence, desire,Elsewhere ill-join’d or found apart,Become the pulses of one heart,Which now contracts, and now dilates,And, both to the height exalting, matesSelf-seeking to self-sacrifice.Nay, in its subtle paradise(When purest) this one love unitesAll modes of these two opposites,All balanced in accord so richWho may determine which is which?Chiefly God’s Love does in it live,And nowhere else so sensitive;For each is all that the other’s eye,In the vague vast of Deity,Can comprehend and so containAs still to touch and ne’er to strainThe fragile nerves of joy.  And then’Tis such a wise goodwill to menAnd politic economyAs in a prosperous State we see,Where every plot of common landIs yielded to some private handTo fence about and cultivate.Does narrowness its praise abate?Nay, the infinite of man is foundBut in the beating of its bound,And, if a brook its banks o’erpass,’Tis not a sea, but a morass.

4

   No giddiest hope, no wildest guessOf Love’s most innocent loftinessHad dared to dream of its own worth,Till Heaven’s bold sun-gleam lit the earth.Christ’s marriage with the Church is more,My Children, than a metaphor.The heaven of heavens is symbol’d whereThe torch of Psyche flash’d despair.   But here I speak of heights, and heightsAre hardly scaled.  The best delightsOf even this homeliest passion, areIn the most perfect souls so rare,That they who feel them are as menSailing the Southern ocean, when,At midnight, they look up, and eyeThe starry Cross, and a strange skyOf brighter stars; and sad thoughts comeTo each how far he is from home.

5

   Love’s inmost nuptial sweetness seeIn the doctrine of virginity!Could lovers, at their dear wish, blend,’Twould kill the bliss which they intend;For joy is love’s obedienceAgainst the law of natural sense;And those perpetual yearnings sweetOf lives which dream that they can meetAre given that lovers never mayBe without sacrifice to layOn the high altar of true love,With tears of vestal joy.  To moveFrantic, like comets to our bliss,Forgetting that we always miss,And so to seek and fly the sun,By turns, around which love should run,Perverts the ineffable delightOf service guerdon’d with full sightAnd pathos of a hopeless want,To an unreal victory’s vaunt,And plaint of an unreal defeat.Yet no less dangerous misconceitMay also be of the virgin will,Whose goal is nuptial blessing still,And whose true being doth subsist,There where the outward forms are miss’d,In those who learn and keep the senseDivine of ‘due benevolence,’Seeking for aye, without alloyOf selfish thought, another’s joy,And finding in degrees unknownThat which in act they shunn’d, their own.For all delights of earthly loveAre shadows of the heavens, and moveAs other shadows do; they fleeFrom him that follows them; and heWho flies, for ever finds his feetEmbraced by their pursuings sweet.

6

   Then, even in love humane, do INot counsel aspirations high,So much as sweet and regularUse of the good in which we are.As when a man along the waysWalks, and a sudden music plays,His step unchanged, he steps in time,So let your Grace with Nature chime.Her primal forces burst, like straws,The bonds of uncongenial laws.Right life is glad as well as just,And, rooted strong in ‘This I must,’It bears aloft the blossom gayAnd zephyr-toss’d, of ‘This I may;’Whereby the complex heavens rejoiceIn fruits of uncommanded choice.Be this your rule: seeking delightEsteem success the test of right;For ’gainst God’s will much may be done,But nought enjoy’d, and pleasures noneExist, but, like to springs of steel,Active no longer than they feelThe checks that make them serve the soul,They take their vigour from control.A man need only keep but wellThe Church’s indispensableFirst precepts, and she then allows,Nay, more, she bids him, for his spouse,Leave even his heavenly Father’s awe,At times, and His immaculate law,Construed in its extremer sense.Jehovah’s mild magnipotenceSmiles to behold His children playIn their own free and childish way,And can His fullest praise descryIn the exuberant libertyOf those who, having understoodThe glory of the Central Good,And how souls ne’er may match or merge,But as they thitherward converge,Take in love’s innocent gladness partWith infantine, untroubled heart,And faith that, straight t’wards heaven’s far Spring,Sleeps, like the swallow, on the wing.

7

   Lovers, once married, deem their bondThen perfect, scanning nought beyondFor love to do but to sustainThe spousal hour’s delighted gain.But time and a right life aloneFulfil the promise then foreshown.The Bridegroom and the Bride withalAre but unwrought materialOf marriage; nay, so far is love,Thus crown’d, from being thereto enough,Without the long, compulsive aweOf duty, that the bond of lawDoes oftener marriage-love evoke,Than love, which does not wear the yokeOf legal vows, submits to beSelf-rein’d from ruinous liberty.Lovely is love; but age well knows’Twas law which kept the lover’s vowsInviolate through the year or yearsOf worship pieced with panic fears,When she who lay within his breastSeem’d of all women perhaps the best,But not the whole, of womankind,Or love, in his yet wayward mind,Had ghastly doubts its precious lifeWas pledged for aye to the wrong wife.   Could it be else?  A youth pursuesA maid, whom chance, not he, did choose,Till to his strange arms hurries sheIn a despair of modesty.Then, simply and without pretenceOf insight or experience,They plight their vows.  The parents say‘We cannot speak them yea or nay;The thing proceedeth from the Lord!’And wisdom still approves their word;For God created so these twoThey match as well as others doThat take more pains, and trust Him lessWho never fails, if ask’d, to blessHis children’s helpless ignoranceAnd blind election of life’s chance.Verily, choice not matters much,If but the woman’s truly such,And the young man has led the lifeWithout which how shall e’er the wifeBe the one woman in the world?Love’s sensitive tendrils sicken, curl’dRound folly’s former stay; for ’tisThe doom of all unsanction’d blissTo mock some good that, gain’d, keeps stillThe taint of the rejected ill.

8

   Howbeit, though both were perfect, sheOf whom the maid was prophecyAs yet lives not, and Love rebelsAgainst the law of any else;And, as a steed takes blind alarm,Disowns the rein, and hunts his harm,So, misdespairing word and actMay now perturb the happiest pact.   The more, indeed, is love, the morePeril to love is now in store.Against it nothing can be doneBut only this: leave ill alone!Who tries to mend his wife succeedsAs he who knows not what he needs.He much affronts a worth as highAs his, and that equalityOf spirits in which abide the graceAnd joy of her subjected place;And does the still growth check and blurOf contraries, confusing herWho better knows what he desiresThan he, and to that mark aspiresWith perfect zeal, and a deep witWhich nothing helps but trusting it.   So, loyally o’erlooking allIn which love’s promise short may fallOf full performance, honour thatAs won, which aye love worketh at!It is but as the pedigreeOf perfectness which is to beThat our best good can honour claim;Yet honour to deny were shameAnd robbery: for it is the mouldWherein to beauty runs the goldOf good intention, and the propThat lifts to the sun the earth-drawn cropOf human sensibilities.   Such honour, with a conduct wiseIn common things, as, not to steepThe lofty mind of love in sleepOf over much familiarness;Not to degrade its kind caress,As those do that can feel no more,So give themselves to pleasures o’er;Not to let morning-sloth destroyThe evening-flower, domestic joy;Not by uxoriousness to chillThe warm devotion of her willWho can but half her love conferOn him that cares for nought but her;—These, and like obvious prudenciesObserved, he’s safest that relies,For the hope she will not always seem,Caught, but a laurel or a stream,On time; on her unsearchableLove-wisdom; on their work done well,Discreet with mutual aid; on mightOf shared affliction and delight;On pleasures that so childish beThey’re ’shamed to let the children see,By which life keeps the valleys lowWhere love does naturally grow;On much whereof hearts have account,Though heads forget; on babes, chief fountOf union, and for which babes areNo less than this for them, nay farMore, for the bond of man and wifeTo the very verge of future lifeStrengthens, and yearns for brighter day,While others, with their use, decay;And, though true marriage purpose keepsOf offspring, as the centre sleepsWithin the wheel, transmitting thenceFury to the circumference,Love’s self the noblest offspring is,And sanction of the nuptial kiss;Lastly, on either’s primal curse,Which help and sympathy reverseTo blessings.

9

      God, who may be wellJealous of His chief miracle,Bids sleep the meddling soul of man,Through the long process of this plan,Whereby, from his unweeting side,The Wife’s created, and the Bride,That chance one of her strange, sweet sexHe to his glad life did annex,Grows more and more, by day and night,The one in the whole world oppositeOf him, and in her nature allSo suited and reciprocalTo his especial form of sense,Affection, and intelligence,That, whereas love at first had strangeRelapses into lust of change,It now finds (wondrous this, but true!)The long-accustom’d only new,And the untried common; and, whereasAn equal seeming danger wasOf likeness lacking joy and force,Or difference reaching to divorce,Now can the finish’d lover seeMarvel of me most far from me,Whom without pride he may admire,Without Narcissus’ doom desire,Serve without selfishness, and love‘Even as himself,’ in sense aboveNiggard ‘as much,’ yea, as she isThe only part of him that’s his.

10

   I do not say love’s youth returns;That joy which so divinely yearns!But just esteem of present goodShows all regret such gratitudeAs if the sparrow in her nest,Her woolly young beneath her breast,Should these despise, and sorrow forHer five blue eggs that are no more.Nor say I the fruit has quite the scopeOf the flower’s spiritual hope.Love’s best is service, and of this,Howe’er devout, use dulls the bliss.Though love is all of earth that’s dear,Its home, my Children, is not here:The pathos of eternityDoes in its fullest pleasure sigh.   Be grateful and most glad thereof.Parting, as ’tis, is pain enough.If love, by joy, has learn’d to givePraise with the nature sensitive,At last, to God, we then possessThe end of mortal happiness,And henceforth very well may waitThe unbarring of the golden gate,Wherethrough, already, faith can seeThat apter to each wish than weIs God, and curious to blessBetter than we devise or guess;Not without condescending craftTo disappoint with bliss, and waftOur vessels frail, when worst He mocksThe heart with breakers and with rocks,To happiest havens.  You have heardYour bond death-sentenced by His Word.What, if, in heaven, the name be o’er,Because the thing is so much more?All are, ’tis writ, as angels there,Nor male nor female.  Each a stairIn the hierarchical ascentOf active and recipientAffections, what if all are bothBy turn, as they themselves betrothTo adoring what is next above,Or serving what’s below their love?   Of this we are certified, that weAre shaped here for eternity,So that a careless word will makeIts dint upon the form we takeFor ever.  If, then, years have wroughtTwo strangers to become, in thought.Will, and affection, but one manFor likeness, as none others can,Without like process, shall this treeThe king of all the forest, be,Alas, the only one of allThat shall not lie where it doth fall?Shall this unflagging flame, here nurs’dBy everything, yea, when reversed,Blazing, in fury, brighter, wink,Flicker, and into darkness shrink,When all else glows, baleful or brave,In the keen air beyond the grave?   Beware; for fiends in triumph laughO’er him who learns the truth by half!Beware; for God will not endureFor men to make their hope more pureThan His good promise, or requireAnother than the five-string’d lyreWhich He has vow’d again to the handsDevout of him who understandsTo tune it justly here!  BewareThe Powers of Darkness and the Air,Which lure to empty heights man’s hope,Bepraising heaven’s ethereal cope,But covering with their cloudy cantIts ground of solid adamant,That strengthens ether for the flightOf angels, makes and measures height,And in materialityExceeds our Earth’s in such degreeAs all else Earth exceeds!  Do IHere utter aught too dark or high?Have you not seen a bird’s beak slayProud Psyche, on a summer’s day?Down fluttering drop the frail wings four,Missing the weight which made them soar.Spirit is heavy nature’s wing,And is not rightly anythingWithout its burthen, whereas this,Wingless, at least a maggot is,And, wing’d, is honour and delightIncreasing endlessly with height.

11

   If unto any here that chanceFell not, which makes a month’s romance,Remember, few wed whom they would.And this, like all God’s laws, is good;For nought’s so sad, the whole world o’er,As much love which has once been more.Glorious for light is the earliest love;But worldly things, in the rays thereof,Extend their shadows, every oneFalse as the image which the sunAt noon or eve dwarfs or protracts.A perilous lamp to light men’s acts!By Heaven’s kind, impartial plan,Well-wived is he that’s truly manIf but the woman’s womanly,As such a man’s is sure to be.Joy of all eyes and pride of lifePerhaps she is not; the likelier wife!If it be thus; if you have known,(As who has not?) some heavenly one.Whom the dull background of despairHelp’d to show forth supremely fair;If memory, still remorseful, shapesYoung Passion bringing Eshcol grapesTo travellers in the Wilderness,This truth will make regret the less:Mighty in love as graces are,God’s ordinance is mightier far;And he who is but just and kindAnd patient, shall for guerdon find,Before long, that the body’s bondIs all else utterly beyondIn power of love to actualiseThe soul’s bond which it signifies,And even to deck a wife with graceExternal in the form and face.A five years’ wife, and not yet fair?Blame let the man, not Nature, bear!For, as the sun, warming a bankWhere last year’s grass droops gray and dank,Evokes the violet, bids discloseIn yellow crowds the fresh primrose,And foxglove hang her flushing head,So vernal love, where all seems dead,Makes beauty abound.      Then was that nought,That trance of joy beyond all thought,The vision, in one, of womanhood?Nay, for all women holding good,Should marriage such a prologue want,’Twere sordid and most ignorantProfanity; but, having this,’Tis honour now, and future bliss;For where is he that, knowing the heightAnd depth of ascertain’d delight,Inhumanly henceforward liesContent with mediocrities!

AMELIA

Whene’er mine eyes do my Amelia greetIt is with such emotionAs when, in childhood, turning a dim street,I first beheld the ocean.   There, where the little, bright, surf-breathing town,That shew’d me first her beauty and the sea,Gathers its skirts against the gorse-lit downAnd scatters gardens o’er the southern lea,Abides this MaidWithin a kind, yet sombre Mother’s shade,Who of her daughter’s graces seems almost afraid,Viewing them ofttimes with a scared forecast,Caught, haply, from obscure love-peril past.Howe’er that be,She scants me of my right,Is cunning careful evermore to balkSweet separate talk,And fevers my delightBy frets, if, on Amelia’s cheek of peach,I touch the notes which music cannot reach,Bidding ‘Good-night!’Wherefore it came that, till to-day’s dear date,I curs’d the weary months which yet I have to waitEre I find heaven, one-nested with my mate.   To-day, the Mother gave,To urgent pleas and promise to behaveAs she were there, her long-besought consentTo trust Amelia with me to the graveWhere lay my once-betrothed, Millicent:‘For,’ said she, hiding ill a moistening eye,‘Though, Sir, the word sounds hard,God makes as if He least knew how to guardThe treasure He loves best, simplicity.’   And there Amelia stood, for fairness shewnLike a young apple-tree, in flush’d arrayOf white and ruddy flow’r, auroral, gay,With chilly blue the maiden branch between;And yet to look on her moved less the mindTo say ‘How beauteous!’ than ‘How good and kind!’   And so we went aloneBy walls o’er which the lilac’s numerous plumeShook down perfume;Trim plots close blownWith daisies, in conspicuous myriads seen,Engross’d each oneWith single ardour for her spouse, the sun;Garths in their glad arrayOf white and ruddy branch, auroral, gay,With azure chill the maiden flow’r between;Meadows of fervid green,With sometime sudden prospect of untoldCowslips, like chance-found gold;And broadcast buttercups at joyful gaze,Rending the air with praise,Like the six-hundred-thousand-voiced shoutOf Jacob camp’d in Midian put to rout;Then through the Park,Where Spring to livelier gloomQuicken’d the cedars dark,And, ’gainst the clear sky cold,Which shone afarCrowded with sunny alps oracular,Great chestnuts raised themselves abroad like cliffs of bloom;And everywhere,Amid the ceaseless rapture of the lark,With wonder newWe caught the solemn voice of single air,‘Cuckoo!’   And when Amelia, ’bolden’d, saw and heardHow bravely sang the bird,And all things in God’s bounty did rejoice,She who, her Mother by, spake seldom word,Did her charm’d silence doff,And, to my happy marvel, her dear voiceWent as a clock does, when the pendulum’s off.Ill Monarch of man’s heart the Maiden whoDoes not aspire to be High-Pontiff too!So she repeated soft her Poet’s line,‘By grace divine,Not otherwise, O Nature, are we thine!’And I, up the bright steep she led me, trod,And the like thought pursuedWith, ‘What is gladness without gratitude,And where is gratitude without a God?’And of delight, the guerdon of His laws,She spake, in learned mood;And I, of Him loved reverently, as Cause,Her sweetly, as Occasion of all good.Nor were we shy,For souls in heaven that beMay talk of heaven without hypocrisy.   And now, when we drew nearThe low, gray Church, in its sequester’d dell,A shade upon me fell.Dead Millicent indeed had been most sweet,But I how little meetTo call such graces in a Maiden mine!A boy’s proud passion free affection blunts;His well-meant flatteries oft are blind affronts,And many a tearWas Millicent’s before I, manlier, knewThat maidens shineAs diamonds do,Which, though most clear,Are not to be seen through;And, if she put her virgin self asideAnd sate her, crownless, at my conquering feet,It should have bred in me humility, not pride.Amelia had more luck than Millicent,Secure she smiled and warm from all mischanceOr from my knowledge or my ignorance,And glow’d contentWith my—some might have thought too much—superior age,Which seem’d the gageOf steady kindness all on her intent.Thus nought forbade us to be fully blent.   While, therefore, nowHer pensive footstep stirr’dThe darnell’d garden of unheedful death,She ask’d what Millicent was like, and heardOf eyes like her’s, and honeysuckle breath,And of a wiser than a woman’s brow,Yet fill’d with only woman’s love, and howAn incidental greatness character’dHer unconsider’d ways.But all my praiseAmelia thought too slight for MillicentAnd on my lovelier-freighted arm she leant,For more attent;And the tea-rose I gave,To deck her breast, she dropp’d upon the grave.‘And this was her’s,’ said I, decoring with a bandOf mildest pearls Amelia’s milder hand.‘Nay, I will wear it for her sake,’ she said:For dear to maidens are their rivals dead.   And so,She seated on the black yew’s tortured root,I on the carpet of sere shreds below,And nigh the little mound where lay that other,I kiss’d her lips three times without dispute,And, with bold worship suddenly aglow,I lifted to my lips a sandall’d foot,And kiss’d it three times thrice without dispute.Upon my head her fingers fell like snow,Her lamb-like hands about my neck she wreathed.Her arms like slumber o’er my shoulders crept,And with her bosom, whence the azalea breathed,She did my face full favourably smother,To hide the heaving secret that she wept!   Now would I keep my promise to her Mother;Now I arose, and raised her to her feet,My best Amelia, fresh-born from a kiss,Moth-like, full-blown in birthdew shuddering sweet,With great, kind eyes, in whose brown shadeBright Venus and her Baby play’d!   At inmost heart well pleased with one another,What time the slant sun lowThrough the plough’d field does each clod sharply shew,And softly fillsWith shade the dimples of our homeward hills,With little said,We left the ’wilder’d garden of the dead,And gain’d the gorse-lit shoulder of the downThat keeps the north-wind from the nestling town,And caught, once more, the vision of the wave,Where, on the horizon’s dip,A many-sailed shipPursued alone her distant purpose grave;And, by steep steps rock-hewn, to the dim streetI led her sacred feet;And so the Daughter gave,Soft, moth-like, sweet,Showy as damask-rose and shy as musk,Back to her Mother, anxious in the dusk.And now ‘Good-night!’Me shall the phantom months no more affright.For heaven’s gates to open well waits heWho keeps himself the key.