To One Loved

By George Sterling

God, as He shaped thy beauty, took
    What element divine?
For Oh! I deem His angels look
    From Heaven with eyes like thine.

They are as gems by Beauty wrought
    To blossoms pure and strange—
Forgotten flowers the soul hath sought
    Where things immortal range.

I may not know the visions seen
    Within their crystal scope,
For oft they are as skies serene
    In all that Love can hope;

But when in those enchanted skies
    The shadows come and go,
They seem as deeps whence Music sighs
    But cannot tell her woe.

Such are God's jewels. Tho' their light
    May grace but mortal years,
Divinely yet they star our night,
    More beautiful for tears.

They are as voice to things that lie
    Beyond the bourne of speech—
Too great for ecstasy to sigh,
    Too fair for tongue to teach.

They are as that intrinsic word
    That Nature strives to say—
By night an immanence unheard,
    A peacelessness by day.

And thus their gentle glories are
    A mystery to me
So kindred to the evening star,
    The mountains and the sea,

That when we part my soul must yet
    Regard, in wanderings,
The beauty and the sadness met
    In far, eternal things.
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