Ii

O soul who still art strange to sense, Who often against beauty wouldst complain, Doubting between joy and pain: If like the startling touch of something keen Against thee, it hath been To follow from an upland height The swift sun hunting rain Across the April meadows of a plain, Until the fields would flash into the air Their joyous green, like emeralds alight; Or when in the blue of night's mid-noon The burning naked moon Draws to a brink of cloudy weather near, A breadth of snow, firm and soft as a wing, Stretcht out over a wind that gently goes,-- Through the white sleep of snowy cloud there grows An azure-border'd shining ring, The gleaming dream of the approaching joy of her;-- What now wilt thou do, Soul? What now, If with such things as these troubled thou wert? How wilt thou now endure, or how Not now be strangely hurt?-- When utter beauty must come closer to thee Than even anger or fear could be; When thou, like metal in a kiln, must lie Seized by beauty's mightily able flame; Enjoyed by beauty as by the ruthless glee Of an unescapable power; Obeying beauty as air obeys a cry; Yea, one thing made of beauty and thee, As steel and a white heat are made the same! --Ah, but I know how this infirmity Will fail and be not, no, not memory, When I begin the marvellous hour. This only is my heart's strain'd eagerness, Long waiting for its bliss.-- But from those other fears, from those That keep to Love so close, From fears that are the shadow of delight, Hide me, O joys; make them unknown to-night!