Poem by Dinah Maria Craik

Dante to Beatrice

I SEE thee, gliding towards me with slow pace
Across the azure fields of Paradise,
Where thine each footstep makes a star arise.
So from this heart's once void but infinite space
Each strange sweet touch of thy celestial grace
In the old mortal life, struck out some spark
To light the world, though all my heaven lay dark.
O Beatrice, cypresses enlace
My laurels: none have grown save tear-bedewed--
Salt tears that sank into the earth unviewed,
And sprang up green to form a crown of bays.
Take it! At thy dear feet I lay my all,
What men my honors, virtues, glories, call:
I lived, loved, suffered, sung--for thy sole praise.

1. The Aurora on the Clyde
2. Between Two Worlds
3. A Rejected Lover
4. The Night Before the Mowing
5. Saint Elizabeth of Bohemia

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