Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE CALL OF LOVE O Immortal Love! The centuries Have confessed thy powers and art to please, Yet still thou guardest all thy mystery. Command is writ upon thy brow ? the free Of Earth e'er have yielded to thy sway. Time has not bent thee to the ground, Aged thy face or deafed thine ears to sound; There’s enraptured secret glitter in thine eyes, And in thy voice, an outflung solo from the skies, An earth-lyre for Nature’s Mastery. Nor rocks, nor caves can from thy presence hide; No soul from thee can surged sea divide; From dawn thy bridal veil fills all man’s sight, And steels the thews of youth to deeds of might. Thou art Queen Beauty, in Life’s Dynasty. Deep through Life, emotion sheds thy beams, Like stars that twinkle in the spring-fed streams. Thy waving hair as years, upon the surface blows; Thy cheeks reflect the lily, then the rose, Each petal beating in some human heart. Thou dost weave a magic on the waiting air, Through twilights, on and on, enchanting free. Leaf-dance and petal-gleam thine errants see; Hear woodland voices, soft and fair, And the vaster fairy footsteps of the night. Who can glimpse thy scheme, thy jewelled visage, For Philosophy and Science are but mirage That oppose their own great doctrines. Can a storm Stir the petals of a rose, or tempest warm The twilight into day before the passage of the night? Then Love, thou hast a savage courage and Deliberate force, that venture and expand The whirl-winds of fierce Nature’s great de- sires. Storm or heights, the flaming sun or fires Of Hell, control not thy spirit’s soaring might. Oft thou art wild, mad and irridescent In thine ills ? then mist-veiled, dim and convalescent, Dream-drowsy in thy languor and thy mystery; Voluptuous i…