Love and Reason

When panting sighs the bosom fill,
And hands by chance united thrill
At once with one delicious pain
The pulses and the nerves of twain;
When eyes that erst could meet with ease,
Do seek, yet, seeking, shyly shun
Extatic conscious unison,—
The sure beginnings, say, be these
Prelusive to the strain of love
Which angels sing in heaven above?

Or is it but the vulgar tune,
Which all that breathe beneath the moon
So accurately learn—so soon?
With variations duly blent;
Yet that same song to all intent,
Set for the finer instrument;
It is; and it would sound the same
In beasts, were not the bestial frame,
Less subtly organised, to blame;
And but that soul and spirit add
To pleasures, even base and bad,
A zest the soulless never had.

It may be—well indeed I deem;
But what if sympathy, it seem,
And admiration and esteem,
Commingling therewithal, do make
The passion prized for Reason’s sake?
Yet, when my heart would fain rejoice,
A small expostulating voice
Falls in; Of this thou wilt not take
Thy one irrevocable choice?
In accent tremulous and thin
I hear high Prudence deep within,
Pleading the bitter, bitter sting,
Should slow-maturing seasons bring,
Too late, the veritable thing.
For if (the Poet’s tale of bliss)
A love, wherewith commeasured this
Is weak and beggarly, and none,
Exist a treasure to be won,
And if the vision, though it stay,
Be yet for an appointed day,—
This choice, if made, this deed, if done,
The memory of this present past,
With vague foreboding might o’ercast
The heart, or madden it at last.

Let Reason first her office ply;
Esteem, and admiration high,
And mental, moral sympathy,
Exist they first, nor be they brought
By self-deceiving afterthought,—
What if an halo interfuse
With these again its opal hues,
That all o’erspreading and o’erlying,
Transmuting, mingling, glorifying,
About the beauteous various whole.
With beaming smile do dance and quiver;
Yet, is that halo of the soul?—
Or is it, as may sure be said,
Phosphoric exhalation bred
Of vapour, steaming from the bed
Of Fancy’s brook, or Passion’s river?
So when, as will be by-and-by,
The stream is waterless and dry,
This halo and its hues will die;
And though the soul contented rest
With those substantial blessings blest,
Will not a longing, half confest,
Betray that this is not the love,
The gift for which all gifts above
Him praise we, Who is Love, the Giver?

I cannot say—the things are good:
Bread is it, if not angels’ food;
But Love? Alas! I cannot say;
A glory on the vision lay;
A light of more than mortal day
About it played, upon it rested;
It did not, faltering and weak,
Beg Reason on its side to speak:
Itself was Reason, or, if not,
Such substitute as is, I wot,
Of seraph-kind the loftier lot;—
Itself was of itself attested;—
To processes that, hard and dry,
Elaborate truth from fallacy,
With modes intuitive succeeding,
Including those and superseding;
Reason sublimed and Love most high
It was, a life that cannot die,
A dream of glory most exceeding.

1844

Ὁ Θεὸς μετὰ σοῦ!

Farewell, my Highland lassie! when the year returns around,
Be it Greece, or be it Norway, where my vagrant feet are found,
I shall call to mind the place, I shall call to mind the day,
The day that’s gone for ever, and the glen that’s far away;
I shall mind me, be it Rhine or Rhone, Italian land or France,
Of the laughings and the whispers, of the pipings and the dance;
I shall see thy soft brown eyes dilate to wakening woman thought,
And whiter still the white cheek grow to which the blush was brought;
And oh, with mine commixing I thy breath of life shall feel,
And clasp thy shyly passive hands in joyous Highland reel;
I shall hear, and see, and feel, and in sequence sadly true,
Shall repeat the bitter-sweet of the lingering last adieu;
I shall seem as now to leave thee, with the kiss upon the brow,
And the fervent benediction of—Ὁ Θεὸς μετὰ σοῦ!

Ah me, my Highland lassie! though in winter drear and long
Deep arose the heavy snows, and the stormy winds were strong,
Though the rain, in summer’s brightest, it were raining every day,
With worldly comforts few and far, how glad were I to stay!
I fall to sleep with dreams of life in some black bothie spent,
Coarse poortith’s ware thou changing there to gold of pure content,
With barefoot lads and lassies round, and thee the cheery wife,
In the braes of old Lochaber a laborious homely life;
But I wake—to leave thee, smiling, with the kiss upon the brow,
And the peaceful benediction of—Ὁ Θεὸς μετὰ σοῦ!