On a Walk, Lands Away
What would one to the dreams of his love say,
those fairy sights in soundless sleep who'd cause
love leave, good grief; or to the setting May,
the strokes of winter brushing springtime laws,
the mowing dawn? Would he first amply pause,
the better to receive all that was there,
unharm'd from we who tell him are but sores,
unreal to eye, unsightly feel, which where
the beauty much lov'd rested pos'd as fairies fair?
Or 'haps we sight this one-fix'd one in sleep,
long lost in sleep's sharp potion as with Mars,
in battle fought and lost and fought to keep,
in some love sensory not t'us, of Farce,
but far from war has lov'd unto the stars.
Our one who then unto his mind is writ
the stellar from past bit then finds not bars,
nor young hope dash'd; instead with flaming wit
he has her shadow glow, and thus her heaven lit.
This one, who may do walk, doth never so,
for he may fly, and like clowns mock'd doth stride
not up, nor down, but far and gone, too slow
(if one were time) to mark his cursed pride.
For time were't youth would swell the waiting tide;
compel for cause its action on some free,
fool'd, fickle fruit, whose life knows none who died.
To bless the heart with prideful blood, as't be,
is thus to love, as young souls did, not land, but sea.
Yet what would mind, on walking land, receive,
to be its fleeting gem, faraway trace,
the hair of whom its soft small sense deceive,
to be gold threaded close, eternal lace?
Yet what could one, whose pleasur'd, awestruck face
on sighting far afar this absurd gaze
doth there express, sensuously, the case
that Eden is (for there it was! its rays),
do, but self-stand like unborn nymph, in selfish craze?
When earth-seas flow their meadows run along,
but here on stone the leaves have fell'd gold brown.
While they who rightly walk think nothing wrong
just I, young lover, boy, have not yet grown.
Will I, I will not, your lace-threads have flown.
That glimpse of mine of you is God's to see,
and God alone may dream all passion mown.
To walk this earth, and mindful that to see
your fair lights flick, was the best life God made for me.