Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/406

Rh He, passionately loving, would bring down His love, his life, his best, (because the best,) His bride of dreams, who walked so still and high Through flowery poems as through meadow-grass The dust of golden lilies on her feet, That she should walk beside him on the rooks In all that clang and hewing out of men, And help the work of help which was his life, And prove he kept back nothing,—not his soul. And when I failed him,—for I failed him, I— And when it seemed he had missed my love,—he thought, ‘Aurora makes room for a working-noon;’ And so, self-girded with torn strips of hope, Took up his life, as if it were for death, (Just capable of one heroic aim,) And threw it in the thickest of the world,— At which men laughed as if he had drowned a dog: Nor wonder,—since Aurora failed him first! The morning and the evening made his day.

But oh, the night! oh, bitter-sweet! oh, sweet! O dark, O moon and stars, O ecstasy Of darkness! O great mystery of love,— In which absorbed, loss, anguish, treason’s self Enlarges rapture,—as a pebble dropt In some full wine-cup, over-brims the wine! While we two sate together, leaned that night So close, my very garments crept and thrilled With strange electric life; and both my cheeks