Can love being love and therefore magical When summer and the roses lie between, Find back to spring? Or shall he know at all The places where his golden feet have been At noontide seeking. Shall he know again The tune of dawn, the unconditioned sky, The world before the coming of the rain, That like a shadow waited and went by, Soft like a God and like a God aflame? Ah will he find that murmur at your lips, Still see you standing, as the morning stands, With fingers stretched that touched and fled and came To mine again, warm to the tender lips Once lilies and now roses--Oh your hands? II. AN ACCUSATION. What have you given, love, to those who gave All for your sake? What gift to weigh the worth Of those who, having all, did nothing save, But for a kiss made jetsam of the earth? What answer have you for the thronging ghosts-- Gentlemen of high heart, who were not brave Because of you? What for the stricken hosts Of those who, seeking truth, embraced the grave Your magic sets about the brain? What way Of answer have you for the fallen tears Of those who heard you calling, and, once strong As being pure, became the body’s prey? What answer, O sweet God, to all the years That worshipped you and crowned you, and were wrong? III. THE TREMBLING BRIM. Love, if remorseless, needeth no defence, (You say) for though he waste our lives it seems A moment spent with love is recompense, For all the might have beens of all our dreams. Yet is there something in the might have been Was never yet in love. O trembling brim Of the far country, that our eyes have seen, Have seen and turned from for the sake of him. Are there no pleasant places, no strange deeds Waiting the comer? Is there no great sea Watched by immaculate angels who attend Our sails that linger? No red star that leads To where beyond all passion shaken free We follow the great road that has no end? THE REPLY. All things are true of love, save these things only, That at the long day’s end when love is over, He’s of love cheated who was once a lover, And she, by love once visited, left lonely. The dream is done, but here’s no cause for sorrow When beauty’s seal is on the dream descending. Beauty is mortal, beauty has an ending, Beauty and love alone need no to-morrow. All other things--courage and truth and virtue-- Have the one doom, the lust for the immortal. Love only, with lost beauty, life outpaces, Cold, though they burn, untroubled, though they hurt you, And white, like gods, when through the sculptured portal The starshine enter and the moon’s cold graces. GOD GAVE US BODIES....