Caroline BransonWith our hearts like drifting suns, had we but walked,As often before, the April fields till star-lightSilkened over with viewless gauze the darknessUnder the cliff, our trysting place in the wood,Where the brook turns! Had we but passed from wooingLike notes of music that run together, into winning,In the inspired improvisation of love!But to put back of us as a canticle endedThe rapt enchantment of the flesh,In which our souls swooned, down, down,Where time was not, nor space, nor ourselves—Annihilated in love!To leave these behind for a room with lamps:And to stand with our Secret mocking itself,And hiding itself amid flowers and mandolins,Stared at by all between salad and coffee.And to see him tremble, and feel myselfPrescient, as one who signs a bond—Not flaming with gifts and pledges heapedWith rosy hands over his brow.And then, O night! deliberate! unlovely!With all of our wooing blotted out by the winning,In a chosen room in an hour that was known to all!Next day he sat so listless, almost coldSo strangely changed, wondering why I wept,Till a kind of sick despair and voluptuous madnessSeized us to make the pact of death.A stalk of the earth-sphere,Frail as star-light;Waiting to be drawn once againInto creation’s stream.But next time to be given birthGazed at by Raphael and St. FrancisSometimes as they pass.For I am their little brother,To be known clearly face to faceThrough a cycle of birth hereafter run.You may know the seed and the soil;You may feel the cold rain fall,But only the earth-sphere, only heavenKnows the secret of the seedIn the nuptial chamber under the soil.Throw me into the stream again,Give me another trial—Save me, Shelley!
With our hearts like drifting suns, had we but walked,As often before, the April fields till star-lightSilkened over with viewless gauze the darknessUnder the cliff, our trysting place in the wood,Where the brook turns! Had we but passed from wooingLike notes of music that run together, into winning,In the inspired improvisation of love!But to put back of us as a canticle endedThe rapt enchantment of the flesh,In which our souls swooned, down, down,Where time was not, nor space, nor ourselves—Annihilated in love!To leave these behind for a room with lamps:And to stand with our Secret mocking itself,And hiding itself amid flowers and mandolins,Stared at by all between salad and coffee.And to see him tremble, and feel myselfPrescient, as one who signs a bond—Not flaming with gifts and pledges heapedWith rosy hands over his brow.And then, O night! deliberate! unlovely!With all of our wooing blotted out by the winning,In a chosen room in an hour that was known to all!Next day he sat so listless, almost coldSo strangely changed, wondering why I wept,Till a kind of sick despair and voluptuous madnessSeized us to make the pact of death.A stalk of the earth-sphere,Frail as star-light;Waiting to be drawn once againInto creation’s stream.But next time to be given birthGazed at by Raphael and St. FrancisSometimes as they pass.For I am their little brother,To be known clearly face to faceThrough a cycle of birth hereafter run.You may know the seed and the soil;You may feel the cold rain fall,But only the earth-sphere, only heavenKnows the secret of the seedIn the nuptial chamber under the soil.Throw me into the stream again,Give me another trial—Save me, Shelley!