Are nearer to the surface of the body Than souls that start no game and turn no rhyme! The soul’s own youth and not the body’s youth Shows through our lineaments. My candle’s bright, My lantern is too loyal not to show That it was made in your great father’s reign.’ ‘And yet the jasmine season warms our blood.’ ‘Great prince, forgive the freedom of my speech; You think that love has seasons, and you think That if the spring bear off what the spring gave The heart need suffer no defeat; but I Who have accepted the Byzantine faith, That seems unnatural to Arabian minds, Think when I choose a bride I choose for ever; And if her eye should not grow bright for mine Or brighten only for some younger eye, My heart could never turn from daily ruin, Nor find a remedy.’ ‘But what if I Have lit upon a woman, who so shares Your thirst for those old crabbed mysteries, So strains to look beyond our life, an eye That never knew that strain would scarce seem bright, And yet herself can seem youth’s very fountain, Being all brimmed with life.’ ‘Were it but true I would have found the best that life can give, Companionship in those mysterious things That make a man’s soul or a woman’s soul Itself and not some other soul.’ ‘That love Must needs be in this life and in what follows Unchanging and at peace, and it is right Every philosopher should praise that love. But I being none can praise its opposite. It makes my passion stronger but to think Like passion stirs the peacock and his mate, The wild stag and the doe; that mouth to mouth Is a man’s mockery of the changeless soul.’ And thereupon his bounty gave what now Can shake more blossom from autumnal chill Than all my bursting springtime knew. A girl Perched in some window of her mother’s house Had watched my daily passage to and fro; Had heard impossible history of my past; Imagined some impossible history Lived at my side; thought time’s disfiguring touch Gave but more reason for a woman’s care. Yet was it love of me, or was it love Of the stark mystery that has dazed my sight, Perplexed her phantasy and planned her care? Or did the torchlight of that mystery Pick out my features in such light and shade Two contemplating passions chose one theme Through sheer bewilderment? She had not paced The garden paths, nor counted up the rooms, Before she had spread a book upon her knees And asked about the pictures or the text; And often those first days I saw her stare On old dry writing in a learned tongue, On old dry faggots that could never please The extravagance of spring; or move a hand As if that writing or the figured page Were some dear cheek. Upon a moonless night I sat where I could watch her sleeping form, And wrote by candle-light; but her form moved,