The visitation of Love

I would that Love himself came like a friend in our maison,

You were saying, beloved, that red evening in the autumn

When within their wicker cage the turtledoves monotonous

Swooned, all in shivers with a sudden mortal groan.

Love will come forever like a friend in our maison,

I answered you, hearking to the sound of falling leaves,

Beyond the garden of chrysanthemums, on the wreaths

Which the forest clutches piling yellow foliage on.

And behold, Love has come knocking on the door of our maison,

Nude as Purity itself, sweet as Sanctity;

His arrows launched toward the dying sunlight sang their way

Like his laughter of a young god scattering all reason.

Love, Love, be the welcome guest in our maison

Where await the flaming hearth and the cup of good wine.

Love, o thou which art too beautiful not to be divine,

Ease within our poverty-stricken hearts all fear of treason!

And Love himself has come with laughter into our maison,

And placing round our necks the double collar of his arms,

He forced our sealed-up mouths and eke our eyes shut from alarms

To see and speak at last all that we refused them long.

Since then, we have bolted up the door of our maison

To always have amongst us here the god of wandering ways

Who gave us to forget the furtive flight of all our days

By singing us the everlasting secret of the seasons.

But we shall open it one day, the door of our maison,

So that Love, our friend himself, may go and kiss mankind

Upon their lips and upon their eyes—for we are mute and blind! —

As he kissed us on our own, that evening full of orisons!

And that will be Easter then all around our maison,

And there shall be heard to pray the dead around their graves,

And there shall be seen to soar like souls great flocks of doves

Between the sunlight dead and the moon born on the horizon.

Stuart Merrill