From his passion for creating

The first hour became expressed. With a sigh the spaces shuddered

When the Word spake — Let there Be! And the All with mighty gesture Broke into reality.

Shyly then the Dark retreated
At forthcoming of the Light,
And the elements discreted
Drove each other into flight.
Swift, in wild and vacant dreaming,
Each toward the distance strove,
Without longing, without chiming,
The unmeasured spaces clove.

All was barren, dumb, unmated,
God was lonesome now, until

He the morning-red created,
To console the mighty ill;
On the chaos blind it painted
A harmonic color-play,
rejoin in love whatever

From its mate once fell away.

Now is all alert with striving

For the next of kin it spurned,

And toward unmeasured living

Are the glance and feeling turned. Be it scramble, be it capture,

Only let each hold its mate! Done is God's creating rapture, We for him the world create.

So unto thy lips they wafted

Me, the wings of morning-red,
And the night, star-clear with thousand
Seals, the bond has warranted.
In the world are we together
Paragon in joy and pain:
Let there Be! once more repeated,
Will not sever us again.

M

THE MOON AT FULL.

ISTRESS, say, what means the babble?

What so lightly moves thy lips?

Ever whispering away

Daintier than wine in sips!

From the moon dost think art able

Draw a sister-twin to stay?

"Would be kissing, kissing!" said I.

Look! for as the thickets darkle
All the branches bud with glowing,
Downward twinkles star on star,
Emeralds, carbuncles, strowing
Sprays with thousandfolded sparkle:
Yet thy soul from all is far.

"Would be kissing, kissing!" said I.

By the absence tried, thy lover,
Likewise by the sour-sweeting,
Feels a miserable lot.

Thee with sacred pledges greeting
This full moon do I discover:
'Tis the moment and the spot.

"I'll be kissing, kissing!" say I.

The charming lady writes me,
Her cipher comes to hand,

It all the more delights me,

Since 'twas her wit that planned. Love's fulness free from rumor

In loveliest retreat,
Such is our gracious humor,
The way in which we meet.

One spray it is selected

Of many thousand blooms,
A house that's well-affected
In many-peopled rooms;
It is the sky o'ersprinkled
With tufts of every hue,
A sea by singing wrinkled
While gales of perfume blew.

It is enigma striving

Our frankness to impart,
Into life's marrow driving
Like dart shot after dart.
What I am thus revealing
Was long our pious rite,
If ye take in the dealing,
So deal, but silent quite.

A

COUNTERPART.

MIRROR I have, my lauder,
I gaze in it so fine,

As if hung the monarch's order

On me with double shine; 'Tis not that I conceited

Peer all round for my face;

I relish being greeted,

And that is here the case.

When in my lone house-keeping
The mirror draweth me,
Belov'd is out of it peeping
Ere I myself can see.
Quickly I turn, it worse is,
She's vanished into air;
Then look I into my verses,
She straight again is there.

I write them ever grander
And more to suit my mind,
Despite of witling's slander
A daily profit find.

My shrine her form encloses,
Transfigur'd to the eye,

In golden running-roses,

And frame of lazuli.