'O meines Lebens goldne zeit.'—

Schiller

O the youth of love and madness! let me sing another song
Ere the cynic grows upon me, and I do the world wrong.
Silver moonlight sleeping over fairy realms to human eyes,
Like the garments of an angel trailing from the starry skies;
Shadows lying in the distance, balmy as the breath of winds;
Moonbeams stealing sweetly through them, like the thoughts through poets' minds;
River with its thousand wavelets gliding bright as silver bars,
With a quiet stretch of bosom for the holding of the stars.
Not a sound to fret the silence—all as still as still can be,
Save at times a low faint murmur from the trembling aspen tree.
I, a poet, here am waiting, in the hush of all this night,
For the glimmer of a maiden, and the sound of footsteps light;
Oh she tarries, and I weary, and the hours are strangely long—
I will slip into the silence, and be busy with a song:
Come, O heart, within this bosom downward from thy purple throne,
Take a happy blushing maid, and set her in thy stead thereon;
Then let all thy purest being ever watch her, as above
Glows and gleams the wingèd cherub angel of the passions—Love.
Thou shalt guide her feet in pathways that shall lead to quiet days,
Drink the tearlike raptures from her eyes, and think it noble praise;
And thy soul shall be a mirror, taking every mood of hers,
While the thoughts that stir thy pulses—let them bow her worshippers,
She shall pay thee back in blessings manifold through all thy life—
Stand upon the hearth, an angel smiling when you call her 'wife.'
Then the faith that works within thee shall have firmer root and soil,
And the heavens above come nearer as you both together toil.
Both thy lives shall mix and mingle as two rivers rush in one—
Deeper grows the channel, smoother all the happy waters run.
Hush, my heart; with all this lyric, lo! as stately as the trees
Comes the maiden, with a presence sweeter than a meadow breeze.
'Moon, that walkest like a queen through all the bowing stars above,
Veil thine eyes, nor from thy heaven look upon a mortal's love.'
All the shadows round me brighten, earth grows sweet with sudden charms,
As the maiden, like a goddess, sinks into my circling arms.
O, the clasp, and kiss, and bosom throbbing with its new delight!
'Turn thy face, and let me, dearest, look into thine eyes to-night.
Lo! within their depths, like richest pearl, what is it I see?—
Something that, like music, whispers all thy woman's love for me—
Rapt-like dreams of blissful fancies—visions of a golden time
Ranging through the years in distance with the cadence of a rhyme—
Many wealths of happiest promise, glowing like celestial fire—
Golden blossoms, slowly filling out to garner in desire.
Never sweeter poet's volume, throbbing with his passionate life—
Every tender glance within them breathing of the future wife.'
Then I clasp the maiden closer with her trembling hand in mine,
And her balmy breath comes upward, like an incense from a shrine;
Then a wind that all unweary, though the others are at rest,
Comes, and, softer than the moonlight, flings her curls upon my breast.
Slowly creeps her arm around me—slowly as a summer's dawn
Slips along the dreamy hills, and all the night is half-withdrawn;
Happy stars look downward, wearing all their soft and holy looks,
While the river keeps its murmur to the compass of a brook's.
Trees wake up and whisper, 'Kingdoms are not worth a maiden's truth;'
(This, I tell you, this was only in my unsuspicious youth).
Then I shake apart the curls that clasp and nestle on her brow,
Kiss its warmth, and whisper fondly in her ear a lover's vow—
'Turn thine eyes to mine, and, sweetest, see as on some sacred shrine,
All the best of my existence yearning to be knit to thine.
Have I not a love within me, rolling like a boundless sea,
Bearing all my willing being, like a pilgrim, unto thee?
Dost thou love me, as I love thee, with a soul that in its place
Gleams like some great star in heaven looking down upon thy face,
With a soul that knows not self, but restless still will fret and roam,
Flinging all its chambers open'—Enter thou into thy home.
Then I clasp the maiden closer, while her breath grows thick with sighs,
And upon her eyelids slumbers light, as if from Paradise.
'Shall this bosom,' thus I whisper, 'with its rich pulsations rife,
Scatter music like a heaven through the stretches of my life;
Shall it keep its tone through all the trying change of good and ill,
Pass beyond this life, and tremble with a finer rapture still?'
Then I wait her answer, as in temples wrought with wealth and care,
Hung the Greeks to hear the thunder of the gods that took their prayer.
Slowly droops her eyelids downward, as through rich and glowing light,
Drops a bird of sombre plumage in a long and steady flight;
Still she will not make reply, but, in the silence soft and meek,
Lays a moment's gentle pressure of her lips against my cheek.
O the bliss and warmth of lips that tremble with a maiden's truth
(This, I tell you, this was only in my unsuspicious youth).
Then I lift her forehead upward from its wavy wealth of hair,
Look again into her eyes, and kiss the love that glimmers there.
All the stars look downward, smiling, while the pulse of Nature seems
Beating like the fairy murmurs heard in summer noonday dreams.
Then again I question—'Dearest, with thy very heart to mine,
And thine arms enwoven round me like twin branches of a vine—
Who is he that through the pathways which thy glowing love hath wrought,
Ranges, culling all the fancies of thine hours of sweetest thought?'
Droops her blushing forehead slowly downward that I may not see,
As she whisper'd in a very heaven of murmurs, 'None but thee!'
O the power of love and madness! O the pulse and strength of youth!
O the soul that melts like sunset in a maiden's eyes of truth!
Could I paint you then my feelings, fling the veil from off my soul,
Show you all the dreams that shook me like a sudden thunder roll;
You would hold me but for jests, and twit me on the finer chords,
Crying, with uplifted finger—'Lo! a fool of woman's words.'
'Ay, a woman's words,' I answer, 'they were pearls unto me,
And my life shot from its darkness like a light from out the sea.
I had strength to seale Olympus, will to dare the task alone.
Fling the bolts about like firebrands, hurl the Thunderer from his throne;
Make the very heavens tremble, like a landscape in the heat;
Gather worlds in like worthless things, and fling them at her feet.
Even Nature shared my frenzy, and the stars in ecstasies
Leapt, as shaken in their dwellings by some all-ethereal breeze;
Every whisper from the tree and chirp from bird but half asleep;
Every murmur from the river gleaming in the distance deep;
Every moonbeam coming down in smiles to wander far and wide—
Each and all had fingers pointing to the maiden by my side.'
O! ye smile at all the madness of this only love of mine,
But the past still glows above it like the fire on Abel's shrine;
Still it studs my life, like some great temple built by Pagan hands,
Or the vacant Sphinx, forever gazing over Egypt's sands.
Unvergesslich on its forehead write I with my bitter tears,
While a sallow look discolours all the foremost of the years.
Can it be the single cloud seen from the Carmel of the mind,
Or the donning of the armour for the war with human kind?
Let such shadows sink, for truly all the world was fair and wise,
When the strength of eighteen summers look'd into a maiden's eyes.