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: 3 The records of the pilgrimage Of passion are impress'd Each on the renovated page Of a blanch'd palimpsest. 4 To mock the faith that lovers place In life's acquir'd love-lore, New lessons, latest learn'd, efface Old teachings taught before. And we ourselves within us bear, Tho' to ourselves unknown, New lives, that with new longings wear, New features of their own. Thus every love is, of its kind, A first love and a last; And every time we love, we find That love has had no past. OMENS AND ORACLES All the phantoms of the future, all the spectres of the past, In the wakeful night came round me, sighing, crying, " Fool, beware ! Check the feeling o'er thee stealing ! Let thy first love be thy last ! Or, if love again thou must, at least this fatal love forbear !" Marah Amara ! Now the dark breaks. Now the lark wakes. Now their voices fleet away. And the breeze about the blossom, and the ripple in the reed, And the beams, and buds, and birds begin to whisper, sing, or say, " Love her, love her, for she loves thee ! " And I know not which to heed. Cara Amara ! IDOLATRY To love is to create, down here below, A god on earth ; and for that god do even More than his earthly worshipper can do For the great God in Heaven. But, since naught perfect is on earth, and none Entirely good, the god on earth created Is but a half-divine, half-devilish one ; A god half loved, half hated. Half loved, half hated, but so all adored That for its favour nothing seems a price Too great; not even life lost and blood pour'd In human sacrifice. 4 And all ungrudged, for this god's worship! sake, His heart's blood drop by drop the adorer gives, His life's life hour by hour ; nor shrinks to break The...