CONFLUENCE OF LOVERS
Au. lovers sing the self-same tune Though to a different air, The harmony is also slightly varied, The rhythm altered and the tone new-coloured ; Vain therefore to compare The songs of love, or lovers Whether by fortune favoured or contraried.
And who shall know what every heart has said? Hearts are not tongues delivered to mere utterance No, they are doomed to pains invisible And, substanceless as shadows yet they are sad, Melancholy they are without mischance, Gay, without cause for joy discernible, And being lovers dangerously they are mad : One was bewitched by honey-coloured hair, Another by a small and surly mouth, Bodies like jonquil stems tall, sweet and slender Have betrayed many—also tulip-bright orbs, In planetary delight these tranced souls wander Towards Poles set in the North or in the South Where each moth-soul magnetic light absorbs.
Souls, the secret selves of star-crossed lovers, Anonymous, like burning tongues of air, In undecipherable speech of times unknown, Or rock-like forms submerged, from tidal seas Preposterous rising. Fatally truth uncovers Naked necessity in lip or eye And takes without a kiss all for her own.
This multitudinous music of men's lives
Hear then, and marvel at such bright-shaped songs—
Harmonious men and women carved in love, Whose forms surpass the mountains and the clouds Yet bearing secret themes, serpent and dove, Ambiguously twining strange melodic smiles Out of vast depths where not a sound belongs.
W. J. TURNER.
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