The gift of body, when the soul is given, Is naught but harmony Of two tendernesses driven One to the other, fervidly. Glory in thyself thou findest sweet. So fair in thy fresh purity, Only to offer me The wondrous gift complete. I come to thee, and know Exaltation in this gift of thine; Always the truer, the more pure I grow Since thy dear body gave itself to mine. Love! oh, may it overflow Our hearts and be the reason in our lives, Whose maddest happiness is one that strives Toward the madness of a trust divine. XXVIII Was there ever in us one caress, One joyous laugh, or tenderness We dared not strew before us on our way? Or ever prayer in silence heard, Whose dim, unuttered word We sought to stay? A single yearning of compassion. A quiet vow or one of passion We sought to slay? So, loving thus, Our hearts, like two apostles, went Seeking the lowly ones with timid brow, Who, feeling then so bound to us, Proclaimed on high love's ravishment, As a flowery people loves the bough That holds them bathed in the sun's warm ray; Our souls, grown greater still by this re-birth, Began to glory those who feel love's sway, Increasing love by love's own might, To cherish thus divinely the whole earth That seemed reflected in our own souls' light. XXIX This fair garden flowering to flame, That seems the wondrous beauty to proclaim Of that clear garden whereunto we cleave, Is crystallised in frosted gold this eve. A great white silence drops athwart the sky, Out there where gleams a marble hue, Whither, one by one, the tall trees stride, Each with its shadow, long and blue And lonely, by its side. No stir of wind; but soundlessly The blanched veils of cold alone Unfold themselves mysteriously On the marshes' silver or the roads' white stone. The stars are lustrous with desire; Like furbished steel the rime Within the cold, translucid air. From some infinity sublime, Across the paleness of a waning moon, Falls shower on shower of fire-- Star-dust that there Sinks in a scintillating swoon. It is the hour divine, when wistfully A million eyes look down upon the earth-- Upon the hazards of our human birth-- From out immutable eternity. XXX