Page:Poems, Household Edition, Emerson, 1904.djvu/145

Rh As the wave breaks to foam on shelves,

Then runs into a wave again,

So lovers melt their sundered selves,

Yet melted would be twain.

II

THE DÆMONIC LOVE

was made of social earth,

Child and brother from his birth,

Tethered by a liquid cord

Of blood through veins of kindred poured.

Next his heart the fireside band

Of mother, father, sister, stand;

Names from awful childhood heard

Throbs of a wild religion stirred;—

Virtue, to love, to hate them, vice;

Till dangerous Beauty came, at last,

Till Beauty came to snap all ties;

The maid, abolishing the past,

With lotus wine obliterates

Dear memory's stone-incarved traits,

And, by herself, supplants alone

Friends year by year more inly known.

When her calm eyes opened bright,

All else grew foreign in their light.

It was ever the self-same tale,