Page:Prometheus Bound, and other poems.djvu/166

160

we met first and loved, I did not build

Upon the event with marble. Could it mean

To last, a love set pendulous between

Sorrow and sorrow? Nay, I rather thrilled,

Distrusting every light that seemed to gild

The onward path, and feared to overlean

A finger even. And, though I have grown serene

And strong since then, I think that God has willed

A still renewable fear. . O love, O troth. .

Lest these enclasped hands should never hold,

This mutual kiss drop down between us both

As an unowned thing, once the lips being cold.

And Love be false! if he, to keep one oath,

Must lose one joy by his life's star foretold.

, oh, pardon, that my soul should make

Of all that strong divineness which I know

For thine and thee, an image only so

Formed of the sand, and fit to shift and break.

It is that distant years which did not take

Thy sovranty, recoiling with a blow,

Have forced my swimming brain to undergo

Their doubt and dread, and blindly to forsake

Thy purity of likeness, and distort

Thy worthiest love with worthless counterfeit.

As if a shipwrecked Pagan, safe in port,

His guardian sea-god to commemorate,

Should set a sculptured porpoise, gills a-snort,

And vibrant tail, within the temple-gate.