Come not before me now, O visionary face! <br />Me tempest-tost, and borne along life's passionate sea; <br />Troublous and dark and stormy though my passage be; <br />Not here and now may we commingle or embrace, <br />Lest the loud anguish of the waters should efface <br />The bright illumination of thy memory, <br />Which dominates the night; rest, far away from me, <br />In the serenity of thine abiding place! <br /> <br />But when the storm is highest, and the thunders blare, <br />And sea and sky are riven, O moon of all my night! <br />Stoop down but once in pity of my great despair, <br />And let thine hand, though over late to help, alight <br />But once upon my pale eyes and my drowning hair, <br />Before the great waves conquer in the last vain fight.<br /><br />Ernest Christopher Dowson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/seraphita/
