And we two lovers shall not sit afar, Critics of nature, but the joyous sea Shall be our raiment, and the bearded star Shoot arrows at our pleasure! We shall be Part of the mighty universal whole, And through all æons mix and mingle with the Kosmic Soul! We shall be notes in that great Symphony Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres, And all the live World’s throbbing heart shall be One with our heart; the stealthy creeping years Have lost their terrors now, we shall not die, The Universe itself shall be our Immortality. THE FOURTH MOVEMENT IMPRESSION LE RÉVEILLON THE sky is laced with fitful red, The circling mists and shadows flee, The dawn is rising from the sea, Like a white lady from her bed. And jagged brazen arrows fall Athwart the feathers of the night, And a long wave of yellow light Breaks silently on tower and hall, And spreading wide across the wold Wakes into flight some fluttering bird, And all the chestnut tops are stirred, And all the branches streaked with gold. AT VERONA HOW steep the stairs within Kings’ houses are For exile-wearied feet as mine to tread, And O how salt and bitter is the bread Which falls from this Hound’s table,—better far That I had died in the red ways of war, Or that the gate of Florence bare my head, Than to live thus, by all things comraded Which seek the essence of my soul to mar. ‘Curse God and die: what better hope than this? He hath forgotten thee in all the bliss Of his gold city, and eternal day’— Nay peace: behind my prison’s blinded bars I do possess what none can take away My love, and all the glory of the stars. APOLOGIA IS it thy will that I should wax and wane, Barter my cloth of gold for hodden grey, And at thy pleasure weave that web of pain Whose brightest threads are each a wasted day? Is it thy will—Love that I love so well— That my Soul’s House should be a tortured spot Wherein, like evil paramours, must dwell The quenchless flame, the worm that dieth not? Nay, if it be thy will I shall endure, And sell ambition at the common mart, And let dull failure be my vestiture, And sorrow dig its grave within my heart. Perchance it may be better so—at least I have not made my heart a heart of stone, Nor starved my boyhood of its goodly feast, Nor walked where Beauty is a thing unknown. Many a man hath done so; sought to fence In straitened bonds the soul that should be free, Trodden the dusty road of common sense, While all the forest sang of liberty, Not marking how the spotted hawk in flight Passed on wide pinion through the lofty air, To where some steep untrodden mountain height Caught the last tresses of the Sun God’s hair.