If The Celestial Body

By Katharine Lee Bates

If the Celestial Body, ethereal, mystic, remembers
Your Brunhild splendor of youth,
If this that sprang up like a flame from the perishing mortal embers
Is you in truth,

Angel face that looks with your eyes and lifts your brows under
The oldtime glistening crown
Of hair like the sunrise gold, face touched with child-wonder,
Look down, look down,

If not through forbidden rift in the sky, through some ivory casement
Of dream in the sobbing night,
And draw, as of old, my spirit from sorrow's selfish abasement
To love's delight;

For the swiftest gleam of your radiant glance in the unreturning
Years of our mortal grace
Would flood my heart with fulness of joy. Oh, lean to my yearning,
Celestial face.