faith, if he has made
     His mind God’s temple, dedicate to truth. 
     Earth’s nourishing delights, no more gainsaid,
     He tastes, as doth the bridegroom rich in youth. 
     Then knows he Love, that beckons and controls;
     The star of sky upon his footway cast;
     Then match in him who holds his tempters fast,
     The body’s love and mind’s, whereof the soul’s. 
     Then Earth her man for woman finds at last,
     To speed the pair unto her goal of goals.

     Or is’t the widowed’s dream of her new mate? 
     Seen has she virulent days of heat in flood;
     The sly Persuader snaky in his blood;
     With her the barren Huntress alternate;
     His rough refractory off on kicking heels
     To rear; the man dragged rearward, shamed, amazed;
     And as a torrent stream where cattle grazed,
     His tumbled world.  What, then, the faith she feels? 
     May not his aspect, like her own so fair
     Reflexively, the central force belie,
     And he, the once wild ocean storming sky,
     Be rebel at the core?  What hope is there?

     ’Tis that in each recovery he preserves,
     Between his upper and his nether wit,
     Sense of his march ahead, more brightly lit;
     He less the shaken thing of lusts and nerves;
     With such a grasp upon his brute as tells
     Of wisdom from that vile relapsing spun. 
     A Sun goes down in wasted fire, a Sun
     Resplendent springs, to faith refreshed compels.

     The hueless love

     Unto that love must we through fire attain,
     Which those two held as breath of common air;
     The hands of whom were given in bond elsewhere;
     Whom Honour was untroubled to restrain.

     Midway the road of our life’s term they met,
     And one another knew without surprise;
     Nor cared that beauty stood in mutual eyes;
     Nor at their tardy meeting nursed regret.

     To them it was revealed how they had found
     The kindred nature and the needed mind;
     The mate by long conspiracy designed;
     The flower to plant in sanctuary ground.

     Avowed in vigilant solicitude
     For either, what most lived within each breast
     They let be seen:  yet every human test
     Demanding righteousness approved them good.

     She leaned on a strong arm, and little feared
     Abandonment to help if heaved or sank
     Her heart at intervals while Love looked blank,
     Life rosier were she but less revered.

     An arm that never shook did not obscure
     Her woman’s intuition of the bliss —
     Their tempter’s moment o’er the black abyss,
     Across the narrow plank—­he could abjure.

     Then came a day that clipped for him the thread,
     And their first touch of lips, as he lay cold,
     Was all of earthly in their love untold,
     Beyond all earthly known to them who wed.