Numpholeptos by Robert Browning — Read

Still you stand, still you listen, still you smile! / Still melts your moonbeam through me, white awhile, / Softening, sweetening, till sweet and soft / Increase so round this heart of mine, that oft / I could believe your moonbeam-smile has past / The pallid limit, lies, transformed at last / To sunlight and salvation -- warms the soul / It sweetens, softens! Would you pass that goal, / Gain love's birth at the limit's happier verge, / And, where an iridescence lurks, but urge / The hesitating pallor on to prime / Of dawn! -- true blood-streaked, sun-warmth, action-time, / By heart-pulse ripened to a ruddy glow / Of gold above my clay -- I scarce should know / From gold's self, thus suffused! For gold means love. / What means the sad slow silver smile above / My clay but pity, pardon? -- at the best, / But acquiescence that I take my rest, / Contented to be clay, while in your heaven / The sun reserves love for the Spirit-Seven / Companioning God's throne they lamp before, / -- Leaves earth a mute waste only wandered o'er / By that pale soft sweet disempassioned moon / Which smiles me slow forgiveness! Such, the boon / I beg? Nay, dear, submit to this -- just this / Supreme endeavor! As my lips now kiss / Your feet, my arms convulse your shrouding robe, / My eyes, acquainted with the dust, dare probe / Your eyes above for -- what, if born, would blind / Mine with redundant bliss, as flash may find / The inert nerve, sting awake the palsied limb, / Bid with life's ecstasy sense overbrim / And suck back death in the resurging joy -- / Love, the love whole and sole without alloy!

Vainly! The promise withers! I employ / Lips, arms, eyes, pray the prayer which finds the word, / Make the appeal which must be felt, not heard, / And none the more is changed your calm regard: / Rather, its sweet and soft grow harsh, and hard -- / Forbearance, then repulsion, then disdain. / Avert the rest! I rise, see! -- make, again / Once more, the old departure for some track / Untried, yet through a world which brings me back / Ever thus fruitlessly to find your feet, / To fix your eyes, to pray the soft and sweet / Which smile there -- take from his new pilgrimage / Your outcast, once your inmate, and assuage / With love -- not placid pardon now -- his thirst / For a mere drop from out the ocean erst / He drank at! Well, the quest shall be renewed. / Fear nothing! Though I linger, unembued / With any drop, my lips thus close. I go! / So did I leave you, I have found you so, / And doubtlessly, if fated to return, / So shall my pleading persevere and earn / Pardon -- not love -- in that same smile, I learn, / And lose the meaning of, to learn once more, / Vainly!