SHE told me, in the morning her white thought Did beat to Godward, like a carrier-dove, My name beneath its wing. And I -- how long! -- That, like a bubble from a water-flower Released as it withdraws itself up-curled Into the nightly lake, her sighed name So loosened from my sleepward-sinking heart; And in the morning did like Phosphor set it To lead the vanward of my orient soul When it storms Heaven; and did all alone, Methought, upon the live coals of my love Those distillations of rich memory cast To feed the fumes of prayer: -- oh! I was then Like one who, dreaming solitude, awakes In sobbing from his dream; and, straining arms That ache for their own void, with sudden shock Takes a dear form beside him. Now, when light Pricks at my lids, I never rouse but think -- 'Is't orison-time with her?' -- And then my hand Presses thy letters in my pulses shook; Where, neighboured on my heart with those pure lines In amity of kindred pureness, lies Image of Her conceived Immaculate; And on the purple inward, thine, -- ah! thine O' the purple-lined side. And I do set Tryst with thy soul in its own Paradise; As lovers of an earthly rate that use, In severance, for their sweet messages Some concave of a tree, and do their hearts Enharbour in its continent heart -- I drop My message in the hollow breast of God. Thy name is known in Heaven; yea, Heaven is weary With the reverberation of thy name; I fill with it the gap between two sleeps, The inter-pause of dream: hell's gates have learned To shake in it; and their fierce forayers Before the iterate echoing recoil, In armed watches when my preparate soul (A war-cry in the alarums of the Night) Conjoins thy name with Hers, Auxiliatrix. |