Now on the summit of Love’s topmost peak
Kiss we and part; no further can we go;
And better death than we from high to low
Should dwindle, and decline from strong to weak.
We have found all, there is no more to seek;
All we have proved, no more is there to know;
And Time can only tutor us to eke
Out rapture’s warmth with custom’s afterglow.
We cannot keep at such a height as this;
For even straining souls like ours inhale
But once in life so rarefied a bliss.
What if we lingered till love’s breath should fail!
Heaven of my earth! one more celestial kiss,
Then down by separate pathways to the vale.
Will the merry Pikes of the Lower Mississippi littoral and the
gamboling whale-backers of the Duluth hinterland be pleased to say what
is laughable in all this?
It is not to be denied that Mr. Austin has written a good deal of
“mighty poor stuff,” but I humbly submit that a writer is not to be
judged by his poorest work, but by his best,—as an athlete is rated,
not by the least weight that he has lifted, but by the greatest—not by
his nearest cast of the discus, but by his farthest. Surely a poet,
as well as a race-horse, is entitled to the benefit of his “record
performance.”
1903.