Collected Works (Vol. II)

TIIk TIIRTEENTILT DAY 69 O fearful firstling dove ! My dawn and spring of love, Love’s light and lure ! Look (as I bend above) Through bright lids filled thereof Perfect and pure, Thy bloom of maidenhood. I could not: if I could, I weuld not: being good, Also endure ! Cruel, to tear or mar The chaliced nenuphar; Cruel to press The rosebud 3 cruel to scar Or stain the flower-star With mad caress. But crueller to destroy The leaping life and joy Born in a careless boy From lone distress. More cruel then art thou The calm and chaste of brow, If thou dost this. Forget the feeble vow Ill sworn: all laws allow Pity, that is Kin unto love, and mild. List to the sad and wild Crying of the lonely child Who asks a kiss. One kiss, like snow, to slip, Cool fragrance from thy lip To melt on mine; One kiss, a white-sail ship To laugh and leap and dip Her brows divine ; One kiss, a starbeam faint With love ofa sweet saint, Stolen like a sacrament In the night’s shrine ! One kiss, like moonlight cold Lighting with floral gold The lake’s low tune; One kiss, one flower to fold, On its own calyx rolled At night, in June! One kiss, like dewfall, drawn A veil o’er leaf and lawn— Mix night, and noon, and dawn, Dew, flower, and moon! One kiss, intense, supreme ! The sense of Nature’s dream And scent of Heaven Shown in the glint and gleam Of the pure dawn’s first beam, With earth for leaven ; Moulded of fire and gold, Water and wine to fold Me in its life, and hold !— In all but seven! I would not kiss thee, I! Lest my lip’s charactery Ruin thy flower. Curve thou one maidenly Kiss, stooping from thy sky Of peace and power ! Thine only be the embrace !— I move not from my place, Feel the exultant face — Mine for an hour ! THE THIRTEENTH DAY. ‘‘If it be a sin to make a true election, she is damned.” Cymbeline. In the dim porchway where the sea’s deep boom Under our very feet made ceaseless song, We sate, remote, the lone lanai! along Sequestered from the young mcon in the gloom 1 The South Sea word for balcony, or rather verandah.