Emblems Of Love

SHE

What hast thou done to me!—I would have soul,

Before I knew thee, Love, a captive held

By flesh. Now, inly delighted with desire,

My body knows itself to be nought else

But thy heart’s worship of me; and my soul

Therein is sunlight held by warm gold air.

Nay, all my body is become a song

Upon the breath of spirit, a love-song.

HE

And mine is all like one rapt faculty,

As it were listening to the love in thee,

My whole mortality trembling to take

Thy body like heard singing of thy spirit.

SHE

Surely by this, Beloved, we must know

Our love is perfect here,—that not as holds

The common dullard thought, we are things lost

In an amazement that is all unware;

But wonderfully knowing what we are!

Lo, now that body is the song whereof

Spirit is mood, knoweth not our delight?

Knoweth not beautifully now our love,

That Life, here to this festival bid come

Clad in his splendour of worldly day and night,

Filled and empower’d by heavenly lust, is all

The glad imagination of the Spirit?