Poems by Lascelles Abercrombie

Emblems of Love

She

Only to be twin elements of joy
In this extravagance of Being, Love,
Were our divided natures shaped in twain;
And to this hour the whole world must consent.
Is it not very marvellous, our lives
Can only come to this out of a long
Strange sundering, with the years of the world between us?

He

Shall life do more than God? for hath not God
Striven with himself, when into known delight
His unaccomplisht joy he would put forth,
This mystery of a world sign of his striving?
Else wherefore this, a thing to break the mind
With labouring in the wonder of it, that here
Beingthe world and weis suffered to be!
But, lying on thy breast one notable day,
Sudden exceeding agony of love
Made my mind a trance of infinite knowledge.
I was not: yet I saw the will of God...

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Poems by Lascelles Abercrombie

Hymn to Love

We are thine, O Love, being in thee and made of thee,
As théou, Léove, were the déep thought
And we the speech of the thought; yea, spoken are we,
Thy fires of thought out-spoken:

But burnd not through us thy imagining
Like fiérce méood in a séong céaught,
We were as clamourd words a fool may fling,
Loose words, of meaning broken.

For what more like the brainless speech of a fool,
The lives travelling dark fears,
And as a boy throws pebbles in a pool
Thrown down abysmal places?

Hazardous are the stars, yet is our birth
And our journeying time theirs;
As words of air, life makes of starry earth
Sweet soul-delighted faces;

As voices are we in the worldly wind;
The great wind of the worlds fate
Is turnd, as air to a shapen sound, to mind
And marvellous desires.

But not in the world as voices storm-shatterd,
Not borne down by the winds weight;
The rushing time rings with our splendid word
Like darkness filld with fires.

For Love doth use us for a sound of song,
And Loves meaning our life wields,
Making our souls like syllables to throng
His tunes of exultation.

Down the blind speed of a fatal world we fly,
As rain blown along earths fields;
Yet are we god-desiring liturgy,
Sung joys of adoration;

Yea, made of chance and all a labouring strife,
We go charged with a strong flame;
For as a language Love hath seized on life
His burning heart to story.

Yea, Love, we are thine, the liturgy of thee,
Thy thoughts golden and glad name,
The mortal conscience of immortal glee,
Loves zeal in Loves own glory.

Poems by Lascelles Abercrombie