Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.
VIII. Wedded LoveSonnets. II. Our love is not a fading, earthly flower
James Russell Lowell (18191891)O
Its wingèd seed dropped down from Paradise,
And, nursed by day and night, by sun and shower,
Doth momently to fresher beauty rise:
To us the leafless autumn is not bare,
Nor winter’s rattling boughs lack lusty green,
Our summer hearts make summer’s fulness, where
No leaf, or bud, or blossom may be seen:
For nature’s life in love’s deep life doth lie,
Love,—whose forgetfulness is beauty’s death,
Whose mystic key these cells of Thou and I
Into the infinite freedom openeth,
And makes the body’s dark and narrow grate
The wind-flung leaves of Heaven’s palace-gate.