Orpheus

Of my own love across the lawn, As warm and tender as the dawn Tinting the snows of heaven-born hills, Enamelling the mountain rills With light’s chameleon-coloured dyes; So shone the love-light in grey eyes, Changing for laughter and for tears, Changeless for joy of myriad years. This, this endures; there is no lover, No loved one; all the ages cover These things from sight: but this abides Floating above the whelming tides Of time and space: abides for ever Whether the lovers join or sever. There is no change: the love exists Beyond the moment’s suns and mists In me, abiding: and I see No lover in Eurydice, Save that her kiss awoke in me This knowledge, this supreme content, Annihilation of the event, The vast eternal element Of utter being, bliss, and thought, In dissolution direly wrought Of sense, identity’s eclipse, The shadow of a lover’s lips. The awful steel of Death divides The alternation of the tides Of consciousness, and binds in bliss The dead man to the girl’s live kiss, 152