To Harriet

It is not blasphemy to hope that HeavenMore perfectly will give those nameless joysWhich throb within the pulses of the bloodAnd sweeten all that bitterness which EarthInfuses in the heaven-born soul. O thou5Whose dear love gleamed upon the gloomy pathWhich this lone spirit travelled, drear and cold,Yet swiftly leading to those awful limitsWhich mark the bounds of Time and of the spaceWhen Time shall be no more; wilt thou not turn10Those 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 frame15Of my corporeal nature, through the soulNow knit with these fine fibres? I would giveThe longest and the happiest day that fateHas marked on my existence but to feelONE soul-reviving kiss...O thou most dear,20'Tis an assurance that this Earth is Heaven,And Heaven the flower of that untainted seedWhich springeth here beneath such love as ours.Harriet! let death all mortal ties dissolve,But ours shall not be mortal! The cold hand25Of Time may chill the love of earthly mindsHalf frozen now; the frigid intercourseOf 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 hope30To portray its continuance as now,Warm, tranquil, spirit-healing; nor when ageHas tempered these wild ecstasies, and givenA soberer tinge to the luxurious glowWhich blazing on devotion's pinnacle35Makes virtuous passion supersede the powerOf reason; nor when life's aestival sunTo deeper manhood shall have ripened me;Nor when some years have added judgement's storeTo all thy woman sweetness, all the fire40Which throbs in thine enthusiast heart; not thenShall holy friendship (for what other nameMay love like ours assume?), not even thenShall Custom so corrupt, or the cold formsOf this desolate world so harden us,45As when we think of the dear love that bindsOur souls in soft communion, while we knowEach other's thoughts and feelings, can we sayUnblushingly a heartless compliment,Praise, hate, or love with the unthinking world,50Or dare to cut the unrelaxing nerveThat knits our love to virtue. Can those eyes,Beaming with mildest radiance on my heartTo purify its purity, e'er bendTo soothe its vice or consecrate its fears?55Never, thou second Self! Is confidenceSo vain in virtue that I learn to doubtThe mirror even of Truth? Dark flood of Time,Roll as it listeth thee; I measure notBy month or moments thy ambiguous course.60Another 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 thoughtProlong my being; if I wake no more,65My life more actual living will containThan some gray veteran's of the world's cold school,Whose listless hours unprofitably rollBy one enthusiast feeling unredeemed,Virtue and Love! unbending Fortitude,70Freedom, Devotedness and Purity!That life my Spirit consecrates to you.