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Sidney Lanier - In Absence.
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I.

The storm that snapped our fate`s one ship in twain
 Hath blown my half o` the wreck from thine apart.
O Love! O Love! across the gray-waved main
 To thee-ward strain my eyes, my arms, my heart.
I ask my God if e`en in His sweet place,
 Where, by one waving of a wistful wing,
My soul could straightway tremble face to face
 With thee, with thee, across the stellar ring —
Yea, where thine absence I could ne`er bewail
 Longer than lasts that little blank of bliss
When lips draw back, with recent pressure pale,
 To round and redden for another kiss —
    Would not my lonesome heart still sigh for thee
    What time the drear kiss-intervals must be?


  II.

So do the mottled formulas of Sense
 Glide snakewise through our dreams of Aftertime;
So errors breed in reeds and grasses dense
 That bank our singing rivulets of rhyme.
By Sense rule Space and Time; but in God`s Land
 Their intervals are not, save such as lie
Betwixt successive tones in concords bland
 Whose loving distance makes the harmony.
Ah, there shall never come `twixt me and thee
 Gross dissonances of the mile, the year;
But in the multichords of ecstasy
 Our souls shall mingle, yet be featured clear,
    And absence, wrought to intervals divine,
    Shall part, yet link, thy nature`s tone and mine.


  III.

Look down the shining peaks of all my days
 Base-hidden in the valleys of deep night,
So shalt thou see the heights and depths of praise
 My love would render unto love`s delight;
For I would make each day an Alp sublime
 Of passionate snow, white-hot yet icy-clear,
— One crystal of the true-loves of all time
 Spiring the world`s prismatic atmosphere;
And I would make each night an awful vale
 Deep as thy soul, obscure as modesty,
With every star in heaven trembling pale
 O`er sweet profounds where only Love can see.
    Oh, runs not thus the lesson thou hast taught? —
    When life`s all love, `tis life:  aught else, `tis naught.


  IV.

Let no man say, `He at his lady`s feet
 Lays worship that to Heaven alone belongs;
Yea, swings the incense that for God is meet
 In flippant censers of light lover`s songs.`
Who says it, knows not God, nor love, nor thee;
 For love is large as is yon heavenly dome:
In love`s great blue, each passion is full free
 To fly his favorite flight and build his home.
Did e`er a lark with skyward-pointing beak
 Stab by mischance a level-flying dove?
Wife-love flies level, his dear mate to seek:
 God-love darts straight into the skies above.
    Crossing, the windage of each other`s wings
    But speeds them both upon their journeyings.
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