Love Triumphant

HELEN’S lips are drifting dust;

Ilion is consumed with rust;

All the galleons of Greece

Drink the ocean’s dreamless peace;

Lost was Solomon’s purple show

Restless centuries ago;

Stately empires wax and wane—

Babylon, Barbary, and Spain;—

Only one thing, undefaced,

Lasts, though all the worlds lie waste

And the heavens are overturned.

Dear, bow long ago we learned!

There’s a sight that blinds the sun,

Sound that lives when sounds are done,

Music that rebukes the birds,

Language lovelier than words,

Hue and scent that shame the rose,

Wine no earthly vineyard knows,

Silence stiller than the shore

Swept by Charon’s stealthy oar,

Ocean more divinely free

Than Pacific’s boundless sea,—

Ye who love have learned it true.

Dear, how long ago we knew!