And seeming ever best and fairest now, A love that doth not kneel for what it seeks, But faces Truth and Beauty as their peer, Showing its worthiness of noble thoughts By a clear sense of inward nobleness; A love that in its object findeth not All grace and beauty, and enough to sate Its thirst of blessing, but, in all of good Found there, it sees but Heaven-granted types Of good and beauty in the soul of man, And traces, in the simplest heart that beats, A family-likeness to its chosen one, That claims of it the rights of brotherhood. For love is blind but with the fleshly eye, That so its inner sight may be more clear; And outward shows of beauty only so Are needful at the first, as is a hand To guide and to uphold an infant's steps: Great spirits need them not: their earnest look Pierces the body's mask of thin disguise, And beauty ever is to them revealed, Behind the unshapeliest, meanest lump of clay, With arms outstretched and eager face ablaze, Yearning to be but understood and loved. TO PERDITA, SINGING. THY voice is like a fountain, Without thinking, To that brimful heart of thine. Every sad and happy feeling, All thy smiles and all thy tears And sweetness, wove of joy and woe, It hath caught a touch of sadness, It hath tones of clearest gladness, A dim, sweet, twilight voice it is With starry feelings quivered through. Thy voice is like a fountain Its clear droppings, lone and single, Thine is music such as yields The green, bright grass of childhood bring to mo, And the bright blue skies above! The joy, that, like a clear breeze, went Peace sits within thine eyes, With white hands crossed in joyful rest, She sits and sings, With folded wings And white arms crost, "Weep not for passed things, The beauty which the summer time The forest oracles sublime That filled thy soul with joyous dread, Flowing to thee, thou knewest not whence, In thine eyes to-day is seen, Fresh as it hath ever been; Promptings of Nature, beckonings sweet, Thy voice is like a fountain, When the moon behind the mountain We know not if 'tis dark or bright; Grows from behind its black, clearedged bound, THE MOON. My soul was like the sea, Through every rift it foamed in vain, And lived but in an aimless seeking. So was my soul; but when 'twas full When thou, its guardian moon, didst rise. |