How Beautiful, If Sorrow Had Not Made

In A Drear-nighted December, Too Happy, Happy Brook, Thy Bubblings Ne'er Remember Apollo's Summer Look; But With A Sweet Forgetting, They Stay Their Crystal Fretting, Never, Never Petting About The Frozen Time.

She Press'd His Hand In Slumber; So Once More He Could Not Help But Kiss Her And Adore.

Who, Of Men, Can Tell That Flowers Would Bloom, Or That Green Fruit Would Swell To Melting Pulp, That Fish Would Have Bright Mail, The Earth Its Dower Of River, Wood, And Vale, The Meadows Runnels, Runnels Pebble-stones, The Seed Its Harvest, Or The Lute Its Tones, Tones Ravishment, Or Ravishment Its Sweet, If Human Souls Did Never Kiss And Greet?

This Living Hand, Now Warm And Capable Of Earnest Grasping, Would, If It Were Cold And In The Icy Silence Of The Tomb, So Haunt Thy Days And Chill Thy Dreaming Nights That Thou Would Wish Thine Own Heart Dry Of Blood, So In My Veins Red Life Might Stream Again, And Thou Be Conscience-calm'd. See, Here It Is-- I Hold It Towards You.

O For Ten Years, That I May Overwhelm / Myself In Poesy; So I May Do The Deed / That My Own Soul Has To Itself Decreed.