To Celia

I Consummation There was a strangeness on your lips, Lips that had been so sure; You still were mine but in eclipse, Beside me but obscure. There was a cloud upon your heart; For, Celia, where you lay, Death, come to break your life apart, Had led your love away. Through the cold distance of your eyes You could no longer see. But when you died, you heard me rise And followed suddenly. And close beside me, looking down As I did on the dead, You made of time a wedding-gown, Of space a marriage-bed. I took, in you, death for a wife, You married death in me, Singing, 'There is no other life, No other God than we!' II During A Chorale By Cesar Franck In an old chamber softly lit We heard the Chorale played, And where you sat, an exquisite Image of Life and lover of it. Death sang a serenade. I know now, Celia, what you heard, And why you turned and smiled. It was the white wings of a bird Offering flight, and you were stirred Like an adventurous child. Death sang: 'Oh, lie upon your bier, Uplift your countenance!' Death bade me be your cavalier, Called me to march and shed no tear, But sing to you and dance. And when you followed, lured and led By those mysterious wings, And when I heard that you were dead, I could not weep. I sang instead, As a true lover sings. Today a room is softly lit; I hear the Chorale played. And where you come, an exquisite Image of Death and lover of it, Life sings a serenade. III Songs Ascending Love has been sung a thousand ways So let it be; The songs ascending in your praise Through all my days Are three. Your cloud-white body first I sing; Your love was heaven's blue, And I, a bird, flew carolling In ring on ring Of you. Your nearness is the second song; When God began to be, And bound you strongly, right or wrong, With his own thong, Tome. But oh, the song, eternal, high, That tops these two! You live forever, you who die, I am not I But you.