These lovers’ inklings which our loves enmesh,
Lost to the cunning and dimensional eye,
Though tenemented in the selves we see,
Not more perforce than azure to the sky,
Were necromancy-juggled to the flesh,
And startled from no daylight you or me.


For trance and silvermess those moons commend,
Which blanch the warm life silver-pale; or look
What ghostly portent mist distorts from slight
Clay shapes; the willows that the waters took
Liquid and brightened in the waters bend,
And we, in love’s reflex, seemed loved of right.


Then no more think to net forthwith love’s thing,
But cast for it by spirit sleight-of-hand;
Then only in the slant glass contemplate,
Where lineament outstripping line is scanned,
Then on the perplexed text leave pondering,
Love’s proverb is set down transliterate.