And all the days that followed seemed as days Lived side by side before, Strangely familiar all your looks and ways, The very frock you wore; Nothing seemed strange, yet all divinely new; Known to your finger tips, Yet filled with wonder every part of you, Your hair, your eyes, your lips.
The wise in love say love was ever thus Through endless Time and Space, Heart linked to heart, beloved, as with us, Only one face--one face-- Our own to love, however fair the rest; 'Tis so true lovers are, For ever breast to breast, On--on--from star to star.
My eye upon your eyes-- So was I born, One far-off day in Paradise, A summer morn; I had not lived till then, But, wildered, went, Like other wandering men, Nor what Life meant Knew I till then.
My hand within your hand-- So would I live, Nor would I ask to understand Why God did give Your loveliness to me, But I would pray Worthier of it to be, By night and day, Unworthy me!
My heart upon your heart-- So would I die, I cannot think that God will part Us, you and I; The work he did undo, That summer morn; I lived, and would die too, Where I was born, Beloved, in you.
All beauty is but thee in echo-shapes, No lovely thing but echoes some of thee, Vainly some touch of thy perfection apes, Sighing as fair as thou thyself to be; Therefore, be not disquieted that I On other forms turn oft my wandering gaze, Nor deem it anywise disloyalty: Nay! 'tis the pious fervour of my eye, That seeks thy face in every other face. As in the mirrored salon of a queen, Flashes from glass to glass, as she walks by, In sweet reiteration still--the queen! So is the world for thee to walk in, sweet; But to see thee is all things to have seen. And, as the moon in every crystal lake, Walking the heaven with little silver feet, Sees each bright copy her reflection take, And every dew-drop holds its little glass, To catch her loveliness as she doth pass, So do all things make haste to copy thee. I, then, to see thee thus over and over, Am wistful too all lovely shapes to see, For each thus makes me more and more thy lover.
Deem not my love is only for the bloom, The honey and the marble, that is You; Tis so, Belovéd, common loves consume Their treasury, and vanish like the dew. Nay, but my love's a thing that's far more true; For little loves a little hour hath room, But not for us their brief and trivial doom, In a far richer soil our loving grew, From deeper wells of being it upsprings; Nor shall the wildest kiss that makes one mouth, Draining all nectar from the flowered world, Slake its divine unfathomable drouth; And, when your wings against my heart lie furled, With what a tenderness it dreams and sings!