up these tears
  Shed for the love of Love; for tho’ mine image,
  The subject of thy power, be cold in her,
  Yet, like cold snow, it melteth in the source
  Of these sad tears, and feeds their downward flow. 
  So Love, arraign’d to judgment and to death,
  Received unto himself a part of blame. 
  Being guiltless, as an innocent prisoner,
  Who when the woful sentence hath been past,
  And all the clearness of his fame hath gone
  Beneath the shadow of the curse of men,
  First falls asleep in swoon.  Wherefrom awaked
  And looking round upon his tearful friends,
  Forthwith and in his agony conceives
  A shameful sense as of a cleaving crime—­
  For whence without some guilt should such grief be? 
  So died that hour, and fell into the abysm
  Of forms outworn, but not to be outworn,
  Who never hail’d another worth the Life
  That made it sensible.  So died that hour,
  Like odour wrapt into the winged wind
  Borne into alien lands and far away. 
  There be some hearts so airy-fashioned,
  That in the death of love, if e’er they loved,
  On that sharp ridge of utmost doom ride highly
  Above the perilous seas of change and chance;
  Nay, more, holds out the lights of cheerfulness;
  As the tall ship, that many a dreary year
  Knit to some dismal sandbank far at sea,
  All through the lifelong hours of utter dark,
  Showers slanting light upon the dolorous wave. 
  For me all other Hopes did sway from that
  Which hung the frailest:  falling, they fell too,
  Crush’d link on link into the beaten earth,
  And Love did walk with banish’d Hope no more,
  It was ill-done to part ye, Sisters fair;
  Love’s arms were wreathed about the neck of Hope,
  And Hope kiss’d Love, and Love drew in her breath
  In that close kiss, and drank her whisper’d tales. 
  They said that Love would die when Hope was gone,
  And Love mourned long, and sorrowed after Hope;
  At last she sought out memory, and they trod
  The same old paths where Love had walked with Hope,
  And Memory fed the soul of Love with tears.

  II

  From that time forth I would not see her more,
  But many weary moons I lived alone—­
  Alone, and in the heart of the great forest. 
  Sometimes upon the hills beside the sea
  All day I watched the floating isles of shade,
  And sometimes on the shore, upon the sands
  Insensibly I drew her name, until
  The meaning of the letters shot into
  My brain:  anon the wanton billow wash’d
  Them over, till they faded like my love. 
  The hollow caverns heard me—­the black brooks
  Of the mid-forest heard me—­the soft winds,
  Laden with thistledown and seeds of flowers,
  Paused in their course to hear me, for my voice
  Was all of thee:  the merry linnet knew me,
  The squirrel knew me, and the dragon-fly