720. Love-Sweetness

SWEET dimness of her loosened hair’s downfall

About thy face; her sweet hands round thy head

In gracious fostering union garlanded;

Her tremulous smiles; her glances’ sweet recall

Of love; her murmuring sighs memorial;

Her mouth’s culled sweetness by thy kisses shed

On cheeks and neck and eyelids, and so led

Back to her mouth, which answers there for all:—

What sweeter than these things, except the thing

In lacking which all these would lose their sweet:—

The confident heart’s still fervor: the swift beat

And soft subsidence of the spirit’s wing,

Then when it feels, in cloud-girt wayfaring,

The breath of kindred plumes against its feet?