Love-flower that burst in kisses and sweet tears,
Scattering its roseate dreamflakes, disappears
Into cold truth:  for, loud with brazen jeers,
   That bell’s toll, clanging in my brain,
   Beat me, loth, to earth again: 

Where, looking on my Love’s endangered state,
Wrought by keen anguish mad, I struck at fate,
Prostrating mockingly in sport or hate
   The aspirations, darkling, we
   Cherish and resolve to be.

She spoke, but sharply checked; then as her zone
A lady’s hands would clasp, My Lady’s own
Pressed at her yielding side; her solemn tone
   And forward eager face implored
   Me to kneel where she adored.

Despite her pain, with tender woman’s phrase
She solaced me, whose part it was to raise
Anew the gladness to her weakened gaze,
   And wisely in man’s firmness be
   To my drooping vine a tree.

But no; sunk, dwindled, dwarfed, and mean, beside
Her couch I sitting saw her eyes grow wide
With awe, and heard her voice move as the tide
   Of steady music rich and calm
   In some high cathedral psalm.

Then, as that high cathedral psalm o’erflows
The dusky, vaulted aisles, and slowly grows
A burst of harmony the hearer knows,
   Her voice assailed by rage, and I
   Took its purport wonderingly.

“Ah, pause for dread, before you charge in haste
The ways of fate; for how can those be traced
That in the life Omnipotent lie based? 
   Or earth-grown atom’s bounded soul
   Grasp the universal whole?

“The more he chafes, the worse his fetter galls
The luckless captive closed in dungeon walls,
And fighting chains and stones, he fighting falls. 
   Nor will that wasteful immolation
   Touch his lofty victor’s station.

“Woe be to him perverse, who, weak and blind,
In pride refusing to behold, shall find
The ponderous roll of circumstance will grind
   His steps; and if he turn not, must
   Bruise and crush him into dust.

“We are the Lord’s, not ours, His angels sing;
So you, mine own, bow meekly to your King,
And striving hard and long His grace will bring: 
   His voice shall through the battle cry,
   When the strife is raging high.”

She fluttering paused:  awhile her surging zeal
All utterance overwhelmed to mute appeal: 
I felt as men who fallen in battle feel,
   When far their chief’s sword, like a gem,
   Points to glory not for them.

“When naked heaven is azure to your eyes,
And light shines everywhere, you can be wise;
But, when its storms in common course arise,
   To you the wind but sobs and grieves
   Wailing with the streaming leaves.

“Rust eats the steel, and moths corrupt the cloth,
And peevish doubts destroy the soul that’s loth
To strive for duty, merged in shameful sloth,
   And lolls a weary wretch forlorn,
   While men reap the mellow corn.