Soul Unto Soul Glooms Darkling

Disguise upon disguise, and then disguise,
Equivocations at the rose’s heart,
Life’s surest pay a poet’s forgeries,
The gossamer gold coinage of our art.
Why hope for truth? Thy very being slips,
Lost from thee, in thy crowd of masking moods.
Why hope for love? Between quick-kissing lips
Is room and stage for all hate’s interludes.
One with thy love thou art! — her eyes, her hair
Known to thy soul, a pure estate of bliss;
But some least motion, look, or changèd air,
And nadir unto zenith nearer is:
Thou mayst control her limbs, but not begin
To know what planet rules the tides within.