Love’s House

I know not how these men or those may takeTheir first glad measure of love’s character,Or whether one should let the summer makeLove’s festival, and one the falling year.

I only know that in my prime of daysWhen my young branches came to blossoming,You were the sign that loosed my lips in praise,You were the zeal that governed all my spring.

In prudent counsel many gathered near,Forewarning us of deft and secret snaresThat are love’s use. We heard them as we hearThe ticking of a clock upon the stairs.

The troops of reason, careful to persuade,Blackened love’s name, but love was more than these,For we had wills to venture unafraidThe trouble of unnavigable seas.

Their word was but a barren seed that liesUndrawn of the sun’s health and undesired,Because the habit of their hearts was wise,Because the wisdom of their tongues was tired.

For in the smother of contentious pride,And in the fear of each tumultuous mood,Our love has kept serenely fortifiedAnd unusurped one stedfast solitude.

Dark words, and hasty humours of the bloodHave come to us and made no longer stayThan footprints of a bird upon the mudThat in an hour the tide will take away.

But not March weather over ploughlands blown,Nor cresses green upon their gravel bed,Are beautiful with the clean rigour grownOf quiet thought our love has piloted.

I sit before the hearths of many men,When speech goes gladly, eager to withholdNo word at all, yet when I pass againThe last of words is captive and untold.

We talk together in love’s house, and thereNo thought but seeks what counsel you may give,And every secret trouble from its lairComes to your hand, no longer fugitive.

I woo the world, with burning will to beDelighted in all fortune it may find,And still the strident dogs of jealousyGo mocking down the tunnels of my mind.

Only for you my contemplation goesClean as a god’s, undarkened of pretence,Most happy when your garner overflows,Achieving in your prosperous diligence.

When from the dusty corners of my brainComes limping some ungainly word or deed,I know not if my dearest friend’s disdainBe durable or brief, spent husk or seed.

But your rebuke and that poor fault of mineGo straitly outcast, and we close the door,And I, no promise asking and no sign,Stand blameless in love’s presence as before.

A beggar in the ditch, I stand and callMy questions out upon the queer paradeOf folk that hurry by, and one and allGo down the road with never answer made.

I do not question love. I am a lordHigh at love’s table, and the vigilant king,Unquestioned, from the hubbub at the boardLeans down to me and tells me everything.