Young Love II - "I make this rhyme of my lady and me"

I make this rhyme of my lady and me     To give me ease of my misery,     Of my lady and me I make this rhyme     For lovers in the after-time.     And I weave its warp from day to day     In a golden loom deep hid away     In my secret heart, where no one goes     But my lady's self, and - no one knows.     With bended head all day I pore     On a joyless task, and yet before     My eyes all day, through each weary hour,     Breathes my lady's face like a dewy flower.     Like rain it comes through the dusty air,     Like sun on the meadows to think of her;     O sweet as violets in early spring     The flower-girls to the city bring,     O, healing-bright to wintry eyes     As primrose-gold 'neath northern skies -     But O for fit thing to compare     With the joy I have in the thought of her!     So all day long doth her holy face     Bring fragrance to the barren place,     And whensoe'er it comes nearest me,     My loom it weaveth busily.     Some days there be when the loom is still     And my soul is sad as an autumn hill,     But how to tell the blessed time     When my heart is one glowing prayer of rhyme!     Think on the humming afternoon     Within some busy wood in June,     When nettle patches, drunk with the sun,     Are fiery outposts of the shade;     While gnats keep up a dizzy reel,     And the grasshopper, perched upon his blade,     Loud drones his fairy threshing-wheel: -     Hour when some poet-wit might feign     The drowsy tune of the throbbing air     The weaving of the gossamer     In secret nooks of wood and lane -     The gossamer, silk night-robes of the flowers,     Fluttered apart by amorous morning hours.     Yea, as the weaving of the gossamer,     If truly that the mystic golden boom,     Is the strange rapture of my hidden loom,     As I sit in the light of the thought of her;     And it weaveth, weaveth, day by day,     This parti-coloured roundelay;     Weaving for ease of misery,     Weaving this rhyme of my lady and me,     Weaving, weaving this warp of rhyme     For lovers in the after-time.     My lady, lover, may never be mine     In the same sweet way that thine is thine,     My lady and I may never stand     By the holy altar hand in hand,     My lady and I may never rest     Through the golden midnight breast to breast,     Nor share long days of happy light     Sweet moving in each other's sight:     Yea, even must we ever miss     The honey of the chastest kiss.