Love in each moment years and years of rest,
Be calm, as being not. 
Ye oceans of intolerable delight,
The blazing photosphere of central Night,
Be ye forgot. 
Terror, thou swarthy Groom of Bride-bliss coy,
Let me not see thee toy. 
O, Death, too tardy with thy hope intense
Of kisses close beyond conceit of sense;
O, Life, too liberal, while to take her hand
Is more of hope than heart can understand;
Perturb my golden patience not with joy,
Nor, through a wish, profane
The peace that should pertain
To him who does by her attraction move. 
Has all not been before? 
One day’s controlled hope, and one again,
And then the third, and ye shall have the rein,
O Life, Death, Terror, Love! 
But soon let your unrestful rapture cease,
Ye flaming Ethers thin,
Condensing till the abiding sweetness win
One sweet drop more;
One sweet drop more in the measureless increase
Of honied peace.

VI.  TRISTITIA.

Darling, with hearts conjoin’d in such a peace
That Hope, so not to cease,
Must still gaze back,
And count, along our love’s most happy track,
The landmarks of like inconceiv’d increase,
Promise me this: 
If thou alone should’st win
God’s perfect bliss,
And I, beguiled by gracious-seeming sin,
Say, loving too much thee,
Love’s last goal miss,
And any vows may then have memory,
Never, by grief for what I bear or lack,
To mar thy joyance of heav’n’s jubilee. 
Promise me this;
For else I should be hurl’d,
Beyond just doom
And by thy deed, to Death’s interior gloom,
From the mild borders of the banish’d world
Wherein they dwell
Who builded not unalterable fate
On pride, fraud, envy, cruel lust, or hate;
Yet loved too laxly sweetness and heart’s ease,
And strove the creature more than God to please. 
   For such as these
Loss without measure, sadness without end! 
Yet not for this do thou disheaven’d be
With thinking upon me. 
Though black, when scann’d from heaven’s surpassing bright,
This might mean light,
Foil’d with the dim days of mortality. 
For God is everywhere. 
Go down to deepest Hell, and He is there,
And, as a true but quite estranged Friend,
He works, ’gainst gnashing teeth of devilish ire,
With love deep hidden lest it be blasphemed,
If possible, to blend
Ease with the pangs of its inveterate fire;
Yea, in the worst
And from His Face most wilfully accurst
Of souls in vain redeem’d,
He does with potions of oblivion kill
Remorse of the lost Love that helps them still. 
   Apart from these,
Near the sky-borders of that banish’d world,
Wander pale spirits among willow’d leas,
Lost beyond measure, sadden’d without end,
But since, while erring most, retaining yet
Some ineffectual fervour of regret,
Retaining still such weal