SOME have won a wild delight,
   By daring wilder sorrow;
Could I gain thy love to-night,
   I'd hazard death to-morrow. 

Could the battle-struggle earn
   One kind glance from thine eye,
How this withering heart would burn,
   The heady fight to try! 

Welcome nights of broken sleep, 
   And days of carnage cold, 
Could I deem that thou wouldst weep 
   To hear my perils told. 

Tell me, if with wandering bands 
I roam full far away, 
Wilt thou, to those distant lands, 
   In spirit ever stray? 

Wild, long, a trumpet sounds afar; 
   Bid me–bid me go 
Where Seik and Briton meet in war, 
On Indian Sutlej's flow. 

Blood has dyed the Sutlej's waves 
   With scarlet stain, I know; 
Indus' borders yawn with graves, 
   Yet, command me go! 

Though rank and high the holocaust 
   Of nations, steams to heaven, 
Glad I'd join the death-doomed host, 
   Were but the mandate given. 

Passion's strength should nerve my arm, 
   Its ardour stir my life, 
Till human force to that dread charm 
   Should yield and sink in wild alarm, 
Like trees to tempest-strife. 

If, hot from war, I seek thy love, 
   Darest thou turn aside? 
Darest thou, then, my fire reprove, 
   By scorn, and maddening pride? 

No–my will shall yet control 
   Thy will, so high and free, 
And love shall tame that haughty soul– 
   Yes–tenderest love for me. 

I'll read my triumph in thine eyes,
   Behold, and prove the change; 
Then leave, perchance, my noble prize, 
   Once more in arms to range. 

I'd die when all the foam is up, 
   The bright wine sparkling high; 
Nor wait till in the exhausted cup 
   Life's dull dregs only lie. 

Then Love thus crowned with sweet reward, 
   Hope blest with fulness large, 
I'd mount the saddle, draw the sword, 
   And perish in the charge! 

 We Are Made One 
with What We Touch and See
Oscar Wilde

We are resolved into the supreme air,
We are made one with what we touch and see,
With our heart's blood each crimson sun is fair,
With our young lives each spring-impassioned tree
Flames into green, the wildest beasts that range
The moor our kinsmen are, all life is one, and all is change. 

With beat of systole and of diastole
One grand great life throbs through earth's giant heart,
And mighty waves of single Being roll
From nerve-less germ to man, for we are part
Of every rock and bird and beast and hill,
One with the things that prey on us, and one with what we kill. . . . 

One sacrament are consecrate, the earth
Not we alone hath passions hymeneal,
The yellow buttercups that shake for mirth
At daybreak know a pleasure not less real
Than we do, when in some fresh-blossoming wood
We draw the spring into our hearts, and feel that life is good. . . . 

Is the light vanished from our golden sun,
Or is this daedal-fashioned earth less fair,
That we are nature's heritors, and one
With every pulse of life that beats the air?
Rather new suns across the sky shall pass,
New splendour come unto the flower, new glory to the grass. 

And we two lovers shall not sit afar,
Critics of nature, but the joyous sea
Shall be our raiment, and the bearded star
Shoot arrows at our pleasure! We shall be
Part of the mighty universal whole,
And through all Aeons mix and mingle with the Kosmic Soul! 

We shall be notes in that great Symphony
Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres,
And all the live World's throbbing heart shall be
One with our heart, the stealthy creeping years
Have lost their terrors now, we shall not die,
The Universe itself shall be our Immortality!