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.