213. The Tide of Love

LOVE, flooding all the creeks of my dry soul,

From which the warm tide ebbed when I was born,

Following the moon of destiny, doth roll

His slow rich wave along the shore forlorn,

To make the ocean—God—and me, one whole.

So, shuddering in its ecstasy, it lies,

And, freed from mire and tangle of the ebb,

Reflects the waxing and the waning skies,

And bears upon its panting breast the web

Of night and her innumerable eyes.

Nor can conceive at all that it was blind,

But trembling with the sharp approach of love,

That, strenuous, moves without one breath of wind,

Gasps, as the wakening maid, on whom the Dove

With folded wings of deity declined.

She in the virgin sweetness of her dream

Thought nothing strange to find her vision true;

And I thus bathed in living rapture deem

No moveless drought my channel ever knew,

But rustled always with the murmuring stream.