Sweet Mercy’s gate, I would not so debase me. 
  Shut out from heaven, I, by the arch-fiend’s wing,
  As by a star, would move, and radiantly
  Go down to sleep in Fame’s bright arms the while
  Hard by, her handmaids, the still centuries
  Lilies and sunshine braided for my brow. 
    Angel of Darkness, give, O give me hate
  For the blind weakness of my passionate love! 
  And if thou knowest sweet pity, stretch thy wing,
  Spotted with sin and seamed with veins of fire,
  Between the gate of heaven and my life’s prayer. 
  For loving, thou didst leave me; and, for that
  The lowly straw-roof of a peasant’s shed
  Sheltered my cradle slumbers, and that Morn,
  Clasping about my neck her dewy arms,
  Drew to the mountains my unfashioned youth,
  Where sunbeams built bright arches, and the wind
  Winnowed the roses down about my feet
  And as their drift of leaves my bosom was,
  Till the cursed hour, when pride was pillowed there,
  Crimsoned its beauty with the fires of hell. 
  God hide from me the time when first I knew
  Thy shame to call a low-born maiden, Bride! 
  Methinks I could have lifted my pale hands
  Though bandaged back with grave-clothes, in that hour
  To cover my hot forehead from thy kiss. 
  For the heart strengthens when its food is truth,
  And o’er the passion-shaken bosom, trail
  And burn the lightnings of its love-lit fires
  Like a bright banner streaming on the storm. 
    The day was almost over; on the hills
  The parting light was flitting like a ghost,
  And like a trembling lover eve’s sweet star,
  In the dim leafy reach of the thick woods,
  Stood gazing in the blue eyes of the night. 
  But not the beauty of the place nor hour
  Moved my wild heart with tempests of such bliss
  As shake the bosom of a god, new-winged,
  When first in his blue pathway up the skies
  He feels the embrace of immortality. 
    A little moment, and the world was changed—­
  Truth, like a planet striking through the dark,
  Shone cold and clear, and I was what I am,
  Listening along the wilderness of life
  For faint echoes of lost melody. 
  The moonlight gather’d itself back from me
  And slanted its pale pinions to the dust. 
  The drowsy gust, bedded in luscious blooms,
  Startled, as ’twere at the death-throes of peace,
  Down through the darkness moaningly fled off. 
    O mournful Past! how thou dost cling and cling—­
  Like a forsaken maiden to false hope—­
  To the tired bosom of the living hour,
  Which, from thy weak embrace, the future time
  Jocundly beckons with a roseate hand. 
  And, round about me honeyed memories drift
  From the fair eminences of young hope,
  Like flowers blown down the hills of Paradise,
  By some soft wave of golden harmony,
  Until the glorious smile of summers gone