I have gone sometimes by the gates of Death And stood beside the cavern through whose doors Enter the voyagers into the unseen.
From that dread threshold only, gazing back,
Have eyes in swift illumination seen Life utterly revealed, and guessed therein What things were vital and what things were vain.
Know then, like a vast ocean from my feet Spreading away into the morning sky,
I saw unrolled my vanished days, and, lo,
Oblivion like a morning mist obscured Toils, trials, ambitions, agitations, ease,
And like green isles, sun-kissed, with sweet perfume Loading the airs blown back from that dim gulf,
Gleamed only through the all-involving haze The hours when we have loved and been beloved.
Therefore, sweet friends, as often as by Love You rise absorbed into the harmony Of planets singing round magnetic suns,
Let not propriety nor prejudice Nor the precepts of jealous age deny What Sense so incontestably affirms;
Cling to the blessed moment and drink deep Of the sweet cup it tends, as there alone Were that which makes life worth the pain to live.
What is so fair as lovers in their joy That dies in sleep, their sleep that wakes in joy?
Caressing arms are their light pillows.
They That like lost stars have wandered hitherto Lonesome and lightless through the universe,
Now glow transfired at Nature's flaming core;
They are the centre; constellated heaven Is the embroidered panoply spread round Their bridal, and the music of the spheres Rocks them in hushed epithalamium. . . . . .
I know that there are those whose idle tongues Blaspheme the beauty of the world that was So wondrous and so worshipful to me.
I call them those that, in the palace where Down perfumed halls the Sleeping Beauty lay,
Wandered without the secret or the key.
I know that there are those, of gentler heart,
Broken by grief or by deception bowed,
Who in some realm beyond the grave conceive The bliss they found not here; but, as for me,
In the soft fibres of the tender flesh I saw potentialities of Joy Ten thousand lifetimes could not use.
Dear Earth,
In this dark month when deep as morning dew On thy maternal breast shall fall the blood Of those that were thy loveliest and thy best,
If it be fate that mine shall mix with theirs,
Hear this my natural prayer, for, purified By that Lethean agony and clad In more resplendent powers,
I ask nought else Than reincarnate to retrace my path,
Be born again of woman, walk once more Through Childhood's fragrant, flowery wonderland And, entered in the golden realm of Youth,
Fare still a pilgrim toward the copious joys I savored here yet scarce began to sip;
Yea, with the comrades that I loved so well Resume the banquet we had scarce begun When in the street we heard the clarion-call And each man sprang to arms — ay, even myself Who loved sweet Youth too truly not to share Its pain no less than its delight.
If prayers Are to be prayed, lo, here is mine!
Be this My resurrection, this my recompense!
