Love Eternal
By Richard Le Gallienne
The human heart will never change,
The human dream will still go on,
The enchanted earth be ever strange
With moonlight and the morning sun,
And still the seas shall shout for joy,
And swing the stars as in a glass,
The girl be angel for the boy,
The lad be hero for the lass.
The fashions of our mortal brains
New names for dead men's thoughts shall give,
But we find not for all our pains
Why 'tis so wonderful to live;
The beauty of a meadow-flower
Shall make a mock of all our skill,
And God, upon his lonely tower
Shall keep his secret - secret still.
The old magician of the skies,
With coloured and sweet-smelling things,
Shall charm the sense and trance the eyes,
Still onward through a million springs;
And nothing old and nothing new
Into the magic world be born,
Yea! nothing older than the dew,
And nothing younger than the morn.
Delight and Destiny and Death
Shall still the mortal story weave,
Man shall not lengthen out his breath,
Nor stay when it is time to leave;
And all in vain for him to ask
His little meaning in the Whole,
Done well or ill his tiny task,
The mystic making of his soul.
Ah! love, and is it not enough
To have our part in this romance
Made of such planetary stuff,
Strange partners in the cosmic dance?
Though Life be all too swift a dream,
And its fair rose must fade and fall,
Life has no sorrow in its scheme
As never to have lived at all.
This fire that through our being runs,
When our two hearts together beat,
Is one with yonder burning sun's,
Two atoms that in glory meet;
What unimagined loss it were,
If that dread power in which we trust
Had left your eyes, your lips, your hair,
Nought but un-animated dust.
Unknown the thrilling touch divine
That sets our magic clay aflame,
That wrought your beauty to be mine,
And joy enough to speak your name;
Thanks be to Life that did this thing,
Unsought, beloved, for you and me,
Gave us the rose, and birds to sing,
The golden earth, the blue-robed sea.