THE LOVER TO HIS LASS

CROWN her with stars, this angel of our planet,
  Cover her with morning, this thing of pure delight,
Mantle her with midnight till a mortal cannot
  See her for the garments of the light and the night.

HOW far I wandered, worlds away and far away,

  Heard a voice but knew it not in the clear cold,
Many a wide circle and many a wan star away,
  Dwelling in the chambers where the worlds were growing old.

SAW them growing old and heard them falling
  Like ripe fruit when a tree is in the wind;

Saw the seraphs gather them, their clarion voices calling
In rounds of cheering labour till the orchard floor was thinned.

SAW a whole universe turn to its setting,
     Old and cold and weary, gray and cold as death,
But before mine eyes were veiled in forgetting,

Something always caught my soul and held its breath.

CAUGHT it up and held it, now I know the reason;
Governed it and soothed it, now I know why;
Nurtured it and trained it and kept it for the season
  When new worlds should blossom in the springtime sky.

HOW have they blossomed, see the sky is like a garden!
  Ah! how fresh the worlds look hanging on the slope!
Pluck one and wear it, Love, and ask the Gardener's pardon,
  Pluck out the Pleiads like a spray of heliotrope.

SEE Aldebaran like a red rose clamber,

  See brave Betelgeux pranked with poppy light;
This young earth must float in floods of amber
  Glowing with a crocus flame in the dells of night.

O YOU cannot cheat the soul of an inborn ambition,
  'Tis a naked viewless thing living in its thought,

But it mounts through errors and by valleys of contrition
  Till it conquers destiny and finds the thing it sought.

CROWN her with stars, this angel of our planet,
  Cover her with morning, this thing of pure delight,
Mantle her with midnight till a mortal cannot