To Harriet

It is not blasphemy to hope that Heaven

More perfectly will give those nameless joys

Which throb within the pulses of the blood

And sweeten all that bitterness which Earth

Infuses in the heaven-born soul. O thou

Whose dear love gleamed upon the gloomy path

Which this lone spirit travelled, drear and cold,

Yet swiftly leading to those awful limits

Which mark the bounds of Time and of the space

When Time shall be no more; wilt thou not turn

Those spirit-beaming eyes and look on me,

Until I be assured that Earth is Heaven,

And Heaven is Earth?--will not thy glowing cheek,

Glowing with soft suffusion, rest on mine,

And breathe magnetic sweetness through the frame

Of my corporeal nature, through the soul

Now knit with these fine fibres? I would give

The longest and the happiest day that fate

Has marked on my existence but to feel

ONE soul-reviving kiss...O thou most dear,

'Tis an assurance that this Earth is Heaven,

And Heaven the flower of that untainted seed

Which springeth here beneath such love as ours.

Harriet! let death all mortal ties dissolve,

But ours shall not be mortal! The cold hand

Of Time may chill the love of earthly minds

Half frozen now; the frigid intercourse

Of common souls lives but a summer's day;

It dies, where it arose, upon this earth.

But ours! oh, 'tis the stretch of Fancy's hope

To portray its continuance as now,

Warm, tranquil, spirit-healing; nor when age

Has tempered these wild ecstasies, and given

A soberer tinge to the luxurious glow

Which blazing on devotion's pinnacle

Makes virtuous passion supersede the power

Of reason; nor when life's aestival sun

To deeper manhood shall have ripened me;

Nor when some years have added judgement's store

To all thy woman sweetness, all the fire

Which throbs in thine enthusiast heart; not then

Shall holy friendship (for what other name

May love like ours assume?), not even then

Shall Custom so corrupt, or the cold forms

Of this desolate world so harden us,

As when we think of the dear love that binds

Our souls in soft communion, while we know

Each other's thoughts and feelings, can we say

Unblushingly a heartless compliment,

Praise, hate, or love with the unthinking world,

Or dare to cut the unrelaxing nerve

That knits our love to virtue. Can those eyes,

Beaming with mildest radiance on my heart

To purify its purity, e'er bend

To soothe its vice or consecrate its fears?

Never, thou second Self! Is confidence

So vain in virtue that I learn to doubt

The mirror even of Truth? Dark flood of Time,

Roll as it listeth thee; I measure not

By month or moments thy ambiguous course.

Another may stand by me on thy brink,,

And watch the bubble whirled beyond his ken,

Which pauses at my feet. The sense of love,

The thirst for action, and the impassioned thought

Prolong my being; if I wake no more,

My life more actual living will contain

Than some gray veteran's of the world's cold school,

Whose listless hours unprofitably roll

By one enthusiast feeling unredeemed,

Virtue and Love! unbending Fortitude,

Freedom, Devotedness and Purity!

That life my Spirit consecrates to you.