Sometimes I fain would find in thee some fault, That I might love thee still in spite of it: Yet how should our Lord Love curtail one whit Thy perfect praise whom most he would exalt? Alas! he can but make my heart's low vault Even in men's sight unworthier, being lit By thee, who thereby show'st more exquisite Like fiery chrysoprase in deep basalt. Yet will I nowise shrink; but at Love's shrine Myself within the beams his brow doth dart Will set the flashing jewel of thy heart In that dull chamber where it deigns to shine: For lo! in honour of thine excellencies My heart takes pride to show how poor it is. LIFE-IN-LOVE Not in thy body is thy life at all But in this lady's lips and hands and eyes; Through these she yields the life that vivifies What else were sorrow's servant and death's thrall. Look on thyself without her, and recall The waste remembrance and forlorn surmise That lived but in a dead-drawn breath of sighs O'er vanished hours and hours eventual. Even so much life hath the poor tress of hair Which, stored apart, is all love hath to show For heart-beats and for fire-heats long ago; Even so much life endures unknown, even where, 'Mid change the changeless night environeth, Lies all that golden hair undimmed in death. THE LOVE-MOON 'When that dead face, bowered in the furthest years, Which once was all the life years held for thee, Can now scarce bide the tides of memory Cast on thy soul a little spray of tears,-- How canst thou gaze into these eyes of hers Whom now thy heart delights in, and not see Within each orb Love's philtred euphrasy Make them of buried troth remembrancers?' 'Nay, pitiful Love, nay, loving Pity! Well Thou knowest that in these twain I have confess'd Two very voices of thy summoning bell. Nay, Master, shall not Death make manifest In these the culminant changes which approve The love-moon that must light my soul to Love?' THE MORROW'S MESSAGE 'Thou Ghost,' I said, 'and is thy name To-day?-- Yesterday's son, with such an abject brow!-- And can To-morrow be more pale than thou?' While yet I spoke, the silence answered: 'Yea, Henceforth our issue is all grieved and grey, And each beforehand makes such poor avow As of old leaves beneath the budding bough Or night-drift that the sundawn shreds away.' Then cried I: 'Mother of many malisons, O Earth, receive me to thy dusty bed!' But therewithal the tremulous silence said: 'Lo! Love yet bids thy lady greet thee once:-- Yea, twice,--whereby thy life is still the sun's; And thrice,--whereby the shadow of death is dead.' SLEEPLESS DREAMS