“But now, you are twain, you are cloven apartFlesh of his flesh, but heart of my heart.”

“Ask nothing more of me sweet;All I can give you I give;Heart of my heart were it more,More would be laid at your feet..”

“Love, that is first and last of all things made,The light that has the living world for shade,The spirit that for temporal veil has onThe souls of all men woven in unison,One fiery raiment with all lives inwroughtAnd lights of sunny and starry deed and thought,And alway through new act and passion newShines the divine same body and beauty through,The body spiritual of fire and lightThat is to worldly noon as noon to night;Love, that is flesh upon the spirit of manAnd spirit within the flesh whence breath began;Love, that keeps all the choir of lives in chime;Love, that is blood within the veins of time;That wrought the whole world without stroke of hand,Shaping the breadth of sea, the length of land,And with the pulse and motion of his breathThrough the great heart of the earth strikes life and death,The sweet twain chords that make the sweet tune liveThrough day and night of things alternative,Through silence and through sound of stress and strife,And ebb and flow of dying death and life:Love, that sounds loud or light in all men's ears,Whence all men's eyes take fire from sparks of tears,That binds on all men's feet or chains or wings;Love that is root and fruit of terrene things;Love, that the whole world's waters shall not drown,The whole world's fiery forces not burn down;Love, that what time his own hands guard his headThe whole world's wrath and strength shall not strike dead;Love, that if once his own hands make his graveThe whole world's pity and sorrow shall not save;Love, that for very life shall not be sold,Nor bought nor bound with iron nor with gold;So strong that heaven, could love bid heaven farewell,Would turn to fruitless and unflowering hell;So sweet that hell, to hell could love be given,Would turn to splendid and sonorous heaven;Love that is fire within thee and light above,And lives by grace of nothing but of love;Through many and lovely thoughts and much desireLed these twain to the life of tears and fire;Through many and lovely days and much delightLed these twain to the lifeless life of night.”

“I wish we were dead together to-day, Lost sight of, hidden away out of sight, Clasped and clothed in the cloven clay,Out of the world's way, out of the light, Out of the ages of worldly weather, Forgotten of all men altogether,As the world's first dead, taken wholly away,Made one with death, filled full of the night.”

“And with light lips yet full of their swift smile,And hands that wist not though they dug a grave,Undid the hasps of gold, and drank, and gave,And he drank after, a deep glad kingly draught:And all their life changed in them, for they quaffedDeath; if it be death so to drink, and fareAs men who change and are what these twain were.And shuddering with eyes full of fear and fireAnd heart-stung with a serpentine desireHe turned and saw the terror in her eyesThat yearned upon him shining in such wiseAs a star midway in the midnight fixed. Their Galahault was the cup, and she that mixed;Nor other hand there needed, nor sweet speechTo lure their lips together; each on eachHung with strange eyes and hovered as a birdWounded, and each mouth trembled for a world;Their heads neared, and their hands were drawn in one,And they saw dark, though still the unsunken sunFar through fine rain shot fire into the south;And their four lips became one burning mouth.”

“Fierce midnights and famishing morrows, And the loves that complete and controlAll the joys of the flesh, all the sorrowsThat wear out the soul.”

“She might come in to bride-bed: and he laughed,As one that wist not well of wise love's craft,And bade all bridal things be as she would.Yet of his gentleness he gat not good;For clothed and covered with the nuptial darkSoft like a bride came Brangwain to King Mark,And to the queen came Tristram; and the night Fled, and ere danger of detective lightFrom the king sleeping Brangwain slid away,And where had lain her handmaid Iseult lay.And the king waking saw beside his headThat face yet passion-coloured, amorous redFrom lips not his, and all that strange hair shedAcross the tissued pillows, fold on fold,Innumerable, incomparable, all gold,To fire men's eyes with wonder, and with loveMen's hearts; so shone its flowering crown aboveThe brows enwound with that imperial wreath,And framed with fragrant radiance round the face beneath.And the king marvelled, seeing with sudden startHer very glory, and said out of his heart;"What have I done of good for God to blessThat all this he should give me, tress on tress,All this great wealth and wondrous? Was it thisThat in mine arms I had all night to kiss,And mix with me this beauty? this that seemsMore fair than heaven doth in some tired saint's dreams,Being part of that same heaven? yea, more, for he,Though loved of God so, yet but seems to see,But to me sinful such great grace is givenThat in mine hands I hold this part of heaven,Not to mine eyes lent merely. Doth God makeSuch things so godlike for man's mortal sake?Have I not sinned, that in this fleshly lifeHave made of her a mere man's very wife?”