SonnetsII. “Our love is not a fading, earthly flower”

Our love is not a fading, earthly flower: 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.

Collection: 
English
James Russell Lowell
Sub Title: 
VIII. Wedded Love

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