The Project Gutenberg EBook of Emblems Of Love, by Lascelles Abercrombie

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: Emblems Of Love

Author: Lascelles Abercrombie

Release Date: March 26, 2005 [EBook #15472]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EMBLEMS OF LOVE ***

Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, S.R. Ellison
and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

EMBLEMS OF LOVE

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

INTERLUDES AND POEMS

EMBLEMS OF LOVE

DESIGNED IN SEVERAL DISCOURSES
BY LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE

_"Wonder it is to see in diverse mindes
How diversly love doth his pageaunts play"

"Ego tamquam centrum, circuli, cui simili modo
se habent circumferentiae partes"_

TO MY WIFE

TABLE

page
HYMN TO LOVE 3

PART I DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY
PRELUDE 7
VASHTI 16

PART II IMPERFECTION
THREE GIRLS IN LOVE:
MARY: A LEGEND OF THE '45 77
JEAN 94
KATRINA 109

PART III VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION
JUDITH 127
THE ETERNAL WEDDING 188

MARRIAGE SONG 200
EPILOGUE: DEDICATION 209

EMBLEMS OF LOVE

HYMN TO LOVE

We are thine, O Love, being in thee and made of thee,
As thou, Love, were the deep thought
And we the speech of the thought; yea, spoken are we,
Thy fires of thought out-spoken:

But burn'd not through us thy imagining
Like fierce mood in a song caught,
We were as clamour'd words a fool may fling,
Loose words, of meaning broken.

For what more like the brainless speech of a fool,--
The lives travelling dark fears,
And as a boy throws pebbles in a pool
Thrown down abysmal places?

Hazardous are the stars, yet is our birth
And our journeying time theirs;
As words of air, life makes of starry earth
Sweet soul-delighted faces;

As voices are we in the worldly wind;
The great wind of the world's fate
Is turned, as air to a shapen sound, to mind
And mar