Romantic Love

O Milky Way, sister in whiteness To Canaan’s rivers and the bright Bodies of lovers drowned, Can we follow toilsomely Your path to other nebulae? 6

I’d like to get away from earth awhile And then come back to it and begin over. May no fate willfully misunderstand me And half grant what I wish and snatch me away Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love: I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.

Should the wide world roll away Leaving black terror Limitless night, Nor God, nor man, nor place to stand Would be to me essential If thou and thy white arms were there And the fall to doom a long way.

But Love has pitched his mansion in The place of excrement For nothing can be sole or whole That has not been rent.

What were all the world’s alarms To mighty Paris when he found Sleep upon a golden bed That first dawn in Helen’s arms?

I had wild Jack for a lover.

No man has ever lived that had enough Of children’s gratitude or woman’s love.

Does the imagination dwell the most Upon a woman won or a woman lost?

Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That’s all we shall know for truth Before we grow old and die.

A pity beyond all telling Is hid in the heart of love.

It is sweet to dance to violins When Love and Life are fair: To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes Is delicate and rare: But it is not sweet with nimble feet To dance upon the air!

Trusty, dusky, vivid, true, With eyes of gold and bramble dew, Steel-true and blade-straight The great artificer Made my mate.

I will make you brooches and toys for your delight Of birdsong at morning and starshine at night.

That old sweetheart of mine.

None shall part us from each other, One in life and death are we: All in all to one another— I to thee and thou to me! Thou the tree and I the flower— Thou the idol; I the throng— Thou the day and I the hour— Thou the singer; I the song!

Is come, my love is come to me.

My heart is like a singing bird.

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth, And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own, And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own, And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers, And that a kelson of the creation is love.

O Lyric Love, half angel and half bird, And all a wonder and a wild desire.

Do I find love so full in my nature, God’s ultimate gift, That I doubt his own love can compete with it? Here, the parts shift?

What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?

Escape me? Never— Beloved! While I am I, and you are you.

Let’s contend no more, Love, Strive nor weep: All be as before, Love, —Only sleep!

And neither the angels in Heaven above Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.