Emblems Of Love

HE

Were it not so, Love could not be at all:

Nought could be, but a yearning to fulfil

Desire of beauty, by vain reaching forth

Of sense to hold and understand the vision

Made by impassion’d body,—vision of thee!

But music mixt with music are, in love,

Bodily senses; and as flame hath light,

Spirit this nature hath imagined round it,

No way concealed therein, when love comes near,

Nor in the perfect wedding of desires

Suffering any hindrance.

SHE

Ah, but now,

Now am I given love’s eternal secret!

Yea, thou and I who speak, are but the joy

Of our for ever mated spirits; but now

The wisdom of my gladness even through Spirit

Looks, divinely elate. Who hath for joy

Our Spirits? Who hath imagined them

Round him in fashion’d radiance of desire,

As into light of these exulting bodies

Flaming Spirit is uttered?