Immortality
One star upon the desert of the sky,
One song upon the silences of night,
Upon the tossing of the stream, one light,
One moment in a blank eternity.
For, O my love, eternity is drear,
And soon we both shall weary of it so,
That we shall turn and hide ourselves for fear
In that sweet hour God gave us long ago.
We cannot wander from it very far,
For down the long wild ways, it calls us home,
Red through the evening like a fallen star,
A dim undying hearth for loves that roam.
I feel were I to meet you I might not
Even know you in the street, nor you know me—
You might look back and whisper, ‘Who is she?’
And I might sigh at something half forgot.
But in our Moment I can kiss your face,
Smiling and strong—unchanged by all the years;
And I can hold you there a little space,
And you hold me—unchanged by all my tears.
And I can whisper to you of that night
When our dark boat made moon-swept waters hiss.
Your face was wet with spray, spray-wet your kiss,
Your eyes were stars that I had set alight.
Dim planets hung above the trembling trees,
The suck of water shook the misty air,
The darkness showed you magic in my hair,
The darkness showed you rest upon my knees.
We saw two wandering stars fall through the sky—
’Twas you and I, lost in the chilly haze,
Apart, adrift, forsaken, but ablaze
With one short hour’s eternal ecstacy.
And into our poor love of rags and tears
The fire of life and deathless love rushed down,
Rushed the great love of this world’s million years,
Gave us the kingdom, set on us the crown—
Gave us all love of lovers since the morn
Of love in the dim daybreak of the earth,
Gave us all harmonies since music’s birth,
Gave us all colours since the first red dawn—
Gave us the Springtime with its changing tunes,
Gave us the mysteries of many Junes,
Gave us the stars, gave us the trackless sea,
Gave us each other to eternity.
Love may be gone, as you are gone, my dear,
But our almighty moment cannot die—
It shall stand fast when the last crumbling sphere
Shall crash out of the ruin of the sky.
When the last constellations faint and fall,
When the last planets burst in fiery foam,
When all the winds have sunk asleep, when all
The worn way-weary comets have come home—
When past and present and the future flee,
My moment lives! and I shall hold you there.
It lives to be my immortality,
An immortality which you shall share.
One star upon the desert of the sky,
One song upon the silences of night,
Upon the tossing of the stream, one light,
One moment in a blank eternity.