Page:Hephaestus, Persephone at Enna, and Sappho in Leucadia.djvu/47

 :To this, and called it love, and seemed content!
 * Love! Love! ’Tis we who lose it know it best!
 * Love! Love! It gleams all gold and marble white
 * High on the headlands of our troubled lives
 * Pure as this golden temple of the Sun
 * To twilit eyes; by day a luring star
 * That leads our sea-worn hearts from strait to strait,
 * By night a fire and solace thro’ the cold;
 * Yet standing as this temple stands, a door
 * To worlds mysterious, to alien things,
 * And all the glory of the waiting gods!
 * Love! Love! It is the blue of bluest skies;
 * The farthest green of waters touched with sun!
 * It is the calm of Evening’s earliest star
 * And yet the tumult of most troubled tides!
 * It is the frail original of things,
 * A timorous flame that once half-feared the light,
 * Yet, loosened, sweeps the world, consuming Time
 * And tinsel empires grim with blood and war!
 * It is a hostage lent of Death, that Life
 * Once more in times afar may find its lost!
 * It is the ache and utter loneliness
 * Of wintry lands made wonderful with Spring!
 * Music it is, and song, regret and tears;
 * The rose upon the tomb of fleeting youth;
 * The one red wine of life, that on the lip
 * Of Thirst turns not to ashes!
 * Change and time
 * And sorrow kneel to it, for at its touch