Possession

The sweetest word that ever was heard —
From the sweetest lips the sweetest word
Has brimmed my heart to its overflow
With a bliss as pure as the angels know;
And my soul, so long bowed sadly down,
Assumes the sceptre and the crown,
And rises up with a regal will!
O, fateful word! my life to fill
With a larger life and more divine;
For it makes me hers and it makes her mine,
And brings again to our unsealed eyes
The beauty and glory of Paradise!
The earth so fair seems fairer far,
And a holier light have sun and star;
The blue of the sky is more divine,
And a deeper music is in the pine;
The wave that breaks on the pebbly shore
Hath a murmur of love ne'er heard before,
And the brooks laugh out with a merrier glee
As they flash through the valleys away to the sea — 
For Nature feels to the inmost core
Of her great warm heart the joy that thrills 
Through the life that love with its new life fills, 
Since she, the lass of the golden tress, 
Wearing the crown of her loveliness, 
My beautiful Bess, my "good queen Bess," 
Hath spoken the word that makes her more — 
That makes her dearer than ever before; 
That makes her mine to love and adore 
For ever and ever and evermore!

What a glow of light on the grasses lay;
     What music stirred in the tasseled corn; 
What fragrance breathed from the new-mown hay,
     As over the fields I passed at morn! 
The birds were as merry as birds could be, 
As they sung and flew from tree to tree; 
I am sure their songs were meant for me, 
For they must have seen, with a glad surprise, 
The soft love-light that brimmed mine eyes, 
And the new-born bliss within my soul: 
For its depths were stirred by a single word 
From faltering lips half-guessed, half-heard, 
And a gush of joy beyond control, 
A keen, sharp joy that half seemed pain, 
With its sudden light filled all my brain 
(I think 'twill never be dark again), 
As a hand dropt, trembling, into mine, 
And a sweet, low voice just murmured — "Thine!"