Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE LOVER SPEAKS by NORMAN ROWLAND GALE

First Line: I HEAR HER BRINGING, WHILE I PASS
Last Line: A PALER SORT OF EARTH!
Subject(s): DESIRE; MAN-WOMAN RELATIONSHIPS; MALE-FEMALE RELATIONS;
I HEAR her bringing, while I pass
Behind the cedar on the grass,
The music of her feet.
How charmingly Diana's pace
Suits Warwickshire! and how her face
(Unmatched in heaven) is sweet!

I watch her as she gives the day
A reason for its pulse; and stay
In hope to see the birth
Of Love's miraculous unrest,
To melt for me that snowbound breast
Of living sky and earth.

I shall not yet be blessed to hold
In shaking palms those locks of gold
That lamp her in the day,
And, dimmed by starfall, in her bed
Prevent a darkness, richly spread
In perfect disarry.

'Tis only when in slumber gleam
The false but brilliant lights of dream,
When shadowy pulses stir,
That I in flimsy godship take
The lips to beggar kings and make
The round world fall to her.

Ah, never-equalled shadow, change
To substance! Finely range,
And give me (since I stood
So long in faith to ghostly charms)
This girl to falter in my arms
And tingle in my blood.

If dreams come true, this cedar'd lawn
Shall be a kingdom in the dawn
Of Love's bewildered mirth:
The world shall have a heavenly gleam,
While heaven itself shall droop, and seem
A paler sort of earth!



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