| |
| A PAIR of lovers in the street! | |
| I dare not mock: with reverence meet | |
| My unforgetting heart I cheat. | |
| |
| Ah, God, spare me—so soon again | |
| At the barred door to beat in vain, | 5 |
| And find their dalliance such fierce pain! | |
| |
| I, yearning up from Hell’s abyss, | |
| See, dreaming through their worlds of bliss, | |
| This Dante and his Beatrice! | |
| |
| For these the distant goal have won | 10 |
| For which God made the plasm and sun; | |
| His patient labouring is done. | |
| |
| For these each Spring has been a bride, | |
| And lonely worlds were spawned and died. | |
| Chaos for them in birth-throes cried. | 15 |
| |
| Far out in seas of Space forlorn | |
| This crescent wave was slowly born | |
| That thunders on the beach of morn. | |
| |
| Ah, they, so soon to be meshed in | |
| The web of splendour, silken-thin, | 20 |
| The nebulae were set to spin! | |
| |
| Up the long path from joy to joy | |
| Love led the way. Can aught destroy | |
| The task that was the stars’ employ? | |
| |
| Their ecstasy to God is more | 25 |
| Than Lucifer at Heaven’s door | |
| Entreating pardon for his war. | |
| |
| These two are gods, for, by love swayed, | |
| They have God’s special task essayed, | |
| And new worlds for their gladness made. | 30 |
| |
| This little hour so lightly given | |
| Makes earth too mean a place to live in, | |
| And broken toys His Hell and Heaven. | |
| |
| All Time, expectant of their bliss, | |
| Hangs fearful. Space through her abyss | 35 |
| Shudders if they this hour should miss. | |
| |
| For if their kiss they went without, | |
| The stars would be a raining rout, | |
| And time in anguish flicker out. | |
| |
| About God’s room from star to sun | 40 |
| A stealthy slippered Thing would run, | |
| Quenching cold tapers one by one. | |
| |
| But they have kissed. Eternity, | |
| Like a great clock, beats steadily | |
| For these mazed fools—but not for me! | 45 |
| |
| Of God’s wide universe the strands | |
| They hold within their clinging hands; | |
| The stars march on at their commands. | |
| |
| So from this moment blossom free | |
| New universes tirelessly— | 50 |
| Aeons of unguessed ecstasy! | |
| |
| But I can only bow and beat | |
| Vain hands about God’s mercy-seat, | |
| And, still remembering, still entreat. | |
| |
| Surely my penance is complete! | 55 |
| The rack turns grimly when I meet | |
| A pair of lovers on the street. | |
| |
