Love

Our love is not a fading earthly flower:

Its wingèd seed dropped down from Paradise,

And, nursed by day and night, by sun and shower,

Doth momently to fresher beauty rise.

To us the leafless autumn is not bare,

Nor winter's rattling boughs lack lusty green:

Our summer hearts make summer's fulness

No leaf or bud or blossom may be seen:

For nature's life in love's deep life doth lie,

Love,—whose forgetfulness is beauty's death,

Whose mystic key these cells of Thou and

Into the infinite freedom openeth,

And makes the body's dark and narrow

The wide-flung leaves of Heaven's palace-gate.