Let us hold April back
One splendid hour
To bless the passionate earth
With golden shower
Of sunlight from the blue;
Oh April skies,
That earth yearns up to; blue has burned to gold,
Gold pales and dies
In delicate faint rose,
Oh flowing time, oh flux eternal. Hold
The hour back. The April hour goes.
Then, let it be of May,
When sound and sight
And all that's beauty manifest
Through all the day,
Of deep on deep with green,
Of light on light
Across the waves of blossom, when the white
Is lovelier than the rose, except the rose
Is loveliest of all;
When through the day the cuckoo calls unseen,
And at nightfall
The nightingale, whose music no man knows
The magic heart of, sitting in the dark
Sings still the world-old way;
When all of these,
Flowers and birds, and sunset and pale skies
Seem gathered up in scent,
And all of sound and sight
Dissolved, ethereal, not of ears and eyes
But only the soul-beauty of the brain
Flows, in such waves of perfume, over all
--Or like a song in colour, of such strain
As spirits finer than our own must hear
(The beautiful made clear);
Then, then, when it is May,
Surely our hand must touch eternity.
Day pales to night, stars pale upon the day,
And May's last blossoming hour flows away.
Not of June either, though the hanging skies
Make but a little span
'Twixt light and growing light;
And when through that short darkness palely flies
The silent great white moth
--A spirit lost in the night,
A soul, without will or way--;
When the arch of trees
Is duskily green, and close as a builded house
Where love with love might stay,
Guarded and still, from sight;
When the hay is sweet in the fields
And love is as sweet as hay;
When the life-impulse of the wonderful untamed earth
Has reached its fulness and height,
Is broad and steady and wide
As sweeps into splendid bays the flowing tide;
When God might look on the land,
When God might look on the sea,
And say: "For ever be
Perfect, completed, achieved,
As now at this moment you stand."
Neither in June shall we stay the eternal flow
Nor grasp the present with pitiful, mortal hand,
For sliding past like water the June hours go.
"LOVE IS THE ULTIMATE MEASURE OF THE SOUL"
Love is the ultimate measure of the soul;
Love is the biting acid, the sure test
To strip the naked gold, discard the rest
Of earthly stuffs; Love is the one thing whole
In a world of broken parts, for Love is all.
Love is creation; Love is the low call
Of deep to deep; Love is the force that shapes
The thing that it believes, and while there gapes
The black earth-pit, where the poor flesh must fall,
Love builds on hope, and buds eternal life.
Love is a victory unsoiled by strife;
Who is there that shall adequately name
All that Love is, this thing as swift as flame
And vast as heaven, yet in every life
Tamed to the narrow needs of little men?
From humble love, that makes the partridge hen
Brave for her chickens, to the Love that shakes
The world from Calvary, all love partakes
Of immortality; one cannot pen
Divinity in words; Love is divine.
The very essence of God does Love enshrine;
For let the heart, however sorely tried,
Open itself to loving, and the wide
Earth is a home; love-lacking must decline
Where black fears crowd across the starless dark.
For Love is light; the faith that will embark,
Unpiloted, upon uncharted seas
Is Love alone; the fiery leap to seize
The splendid distant aim, the invisible mark,
What else but Love's? Love is the thing that stands
Unchanged, on changing tides and shifting sands.