STRAIN them, O winds, the sails of the years, Outspread on the mystic sea; Faster and faster, for laughter or tears, O bear my story to me! Waft it, O Love, on thy purple wings, The dawn is breaking to pass: Strike it, O Life, from thy deeper strings, And drown the music that was. Yet lovely the tremulous haze That curtained the dreamful afar, Thro' the which some face, like a star, Would lighten, too sudden for praise. And white were our loves on their way As morn on the hills of the south; The kisses that rounded their mouth As fresh as the grasses in May. They passed; but the silvery pain Of our tears was easily told, -- For the day but an hour was old, At noon we should meet them again. Weary am I of ideal and of mist, The shroud of life that is dead; -- And, as the passionate sculptor who kissed The lips of marble to red, Ask I a breath that is part of my own, Yet drawn from a soul more sweet; -- Or, as the shaft that upsoareth alone Undiademed, incomplete, Claim I the glory predestined to me In the Mother Builder's will, Portion and place in the Temple to be Till the age her times fulfil. |