And heaven pass too, dwelt on my heaven, a face

Most starry-fair, but kindled from within
As 'twere with dawn. She was dark-haired,
dark-eyed:

Oh, such dark eyes! a single glance of them
Will govern a whole life from birth to death,
Careless of all things else, led on with light
In trances and in visions: look at them,
You lose yourself in utter ignorance;

You cannot find their depth; for they go back,

And farther back, and still withdraw themselves

Quite into the deep soul, that evermore Fresh springing from her fountains in the brain,

Still pouring thro', floods with redundant life Her narrow portals.

Trust me, long ago
I should have died, if it were possible
To die in gazing on that perfectness
Which I do bear within me: I had died,
But from my farthest lapse, my latest ebb,
Thine image, like a charm of light and
strength

Upon the waters, push'd me back again
On these deserted sands of barren life.
Tho' from the deep vault where the heart of
Hope

Fell into dust, and crumbled in the dark-
Forgetting how to render beautiful

Her countenance with quick and healthful blood

Thou didst not sway me upward; could I perish

While thou, a meteor of the sepulchre, Didst swathe thyself all round Hope's quiet

urn

For ever! He, that saith it, hath o'erstept
The slippery footing of his narrow wit,
And fall'n away from judgment. Thou art
light,

To which my spirit leaneth all her flowers,
And length of days, and immortality

Of thought, and freshness ever self-renew'd.
For Time and Grief abode too long with Life,
And, like all other friends i' the world, at last
They grew aweary of her fellowship:

So Time and Grief did beckon unto Death, And Death drew nigh and beat the doors of

Life;

The Present is the vassal of the Past:
So that, in that I have lived, do I live,
And cannot die, and am, in having been,
A portion of the pleasant yesterday,
Thrust forward on to-day and out of place;
A body journeying onward, sick with toil,
The weight as if of age upon my limbs,
The grasp of hopeless grief about my heart,
And all the senses weaken'd, save in that,
Which long ago they had glean'd and gar-
ner'd up

Into the granaries of memory

The clear brow, bulwark of the precious brain,

Chink'd as you see, and seam'd- and all the while

The light soul twines and mingles with the growths

Of vigorous early days, attracted, won,
Married, made one with, molten into all
The beautiful in Past of act or place,
And like the all-enduring camel, driven
Far from the diamond fountain by the palms,
Who toils across the middle moon-lit nights,
Or when the white heats of the blinding

noons

Beat from the concave sand; yet in him keeps

A draught of that sweet fountain that he loves,

To stay his feet from falling, and his spirit From bitterness of death.

When I began to love. you?

Ye ask me, friends, How should I tell

Or from the after-fulness of my heart,
Flow back again unto my slender spring
And first of love, tho' every turn and depth
Between is clearer in my life than all

Its present flow. Ye know not what ye ask.
How should the broad and open flower tell
What sort of bud it was, when, prest together
In its green sheath, close-lapt in silken folds,
It seem'd to keep its sweetness to itself,
Yet was not the less sweet for that it seem'd?
For young Life knows not when young Life
was born,

But takes it all for granted: neither Love,
Warm in the heart, his cradle, can remember
Love in the womb, but resteth satisfied,
Looking on her that brought him to the
light:

Or as men know not when they fall asleep
Into delicious dreams, our other life,
So know I not when I began to love.
This is my sum of knowledge — that my love
Grew with myself- say rather, was my
growth,

My inward sap, the hold I have on earth,
My outward circling air wherewith I breathe,
Which yet upholds my life, and evermore
Is to me daily life and daily death:

For how should I have lived and not have

loved?

Can ye take off the sweetness from the flower,

The color and the sweetness from the rose,
And place them by themselves; or set apart
Their motions and their brightness from the
stars,

And then point out the flower or the star?
Or build a wall betwixt my life and love,
And tell me where I am? 'Tis even thus:
In that I live I love; because I love
I live whate'er is fountain to the one
Is fountain to the other; and whene'er
Our God unknits the riddle of the one,
There is no shade or fold of mystery
Swathing the other.

Many, many years (For they seem many and my most of life, And well I could have linger'd in that porch, So unproportion'd to the dwelling-place), In the May dews of childhood, opposite The flush and dawn of youth, we lived together,

Apart, alone together on those hills.

Before he saw my day my father died,
And he was happy that he saw it not;
But I and the first daisy on his grave
From the same clay came into light at once.
As Love and I do number equal years,
So she, my love, is of an age with me.
How like each other was the birth of each!
On the same morning, almost the same hour,
Under the selfsame aspect of the stars
(O falsehood of all starcraft !), we were born.
How like each other was the birth of each!
The sister of my mother- she that bore
Camilla close beneath her beating heart,
Which to the imprison'd spirit of the child,
With its true-touched pulses in the flow
And hourly visitation of the blood,
Sent notes of preparation manifold,
And mellow'd echoes of the outer world-
My mother's sister, mother of my love,
Who had a twofold claim upon my heart,
One twofold mightier than the other was,
In giving so much beauty to the world,
And so much wealth as God hath charged her
with-

Loathing to put it from herself for ever,
Left her own life with it; and dying thus,
Crown'd with her highest act the placid face
And breathless body of her good deeds past.

So we were born, so orphan'd. She was
motherless

And I without a father. So from each
Of those two pillars which from earth uphold
Our childhood, one had fallen away, and all
The careful burden of our tender years
Trembled upon the other. He that gave
Her life, to me delightedly fulfill'd
All loving kindnesses, all offices

Of watchful care and trembling tenderness. He waked for both: he pray'd for both: he slept

Dreaming of both: nor was his love the less Because it was divided, and shot forth Boughs on each side, laden with wholesome shade,

Wherein we nested sleeping or awake, And sang aloud the matin-song of life.

She was my foster-sister: on one arm The flaxen ringlets of our infancies Wander'd, the while we rested: one soft lap Pillow'd us both: a common light of eyes Was on us as we lay: our baby lips, Kissing one bosom, ever drew from thence The stream of life, one stream, one life, one blood,

One sustenance, which, still as thought grew large,

Still larger moulding all the house of thought, Made all our tastes and fancies like, perhaps All-all but one; and strange to me, and

sweet,

Sweet thro' strange years to know that whatsoe'er

Our general mother meant for me alone,
Our mutual mother dealt to both of us:
So what was earliest mine in earliest life,
I shared with her in whom myself remains.

As was our childhood, so our infancy,
They tell me, was a very miracle
Of fellow-feeling and communion.
They tell me that we would not be alone-
We cried when we were parted; when I wept,
Her smile lit up the rainbow on my tears,
Staid on the cloud of sorrow; that we loved
The sound of one another's voices more
Than the gray cuckoo loves his name, and
learnt

To lisp in tune together; that we slept
In the same cradle always, face to face,
Heart beating time to heart, lip pressing lip,
Folding each other, breathing on each other,
Dreaming together (dreaming of each other
They should have added), till the morning
light

Sloped thro' the pines, upon the dewy pane
Falling, unseal'd our eyelids, and we woke
To gaze upon each other. If this be true,
At thought of which my whole soul languishes
And faints, and hath no pulse, no breath
as tho'

A man in some still garden should infuse
Rich attar in the bosom of the rese,
Till, drunk with its own wine, and overfull
Of sweetness, and in smelling of itself,
It fall on its own thorns - if this be true,
And that way my wish leads me evermore
Still to believe it, 'tis so sweet a thought, -
Why in the utter stillness of the soul
Doth question'd memory answer not, nor tell
Of this our earliest. our closest-drawn,
Most loveliest, earthly-heavenliest harmony?

O blossom'd portal of the lonely house, Green prelude, April promise, glad new-year Of Being, which with earliest violets And lavish carol of clear-throated larks Fill'd all the March of life! I will not speak

of thee: These have not seen thee, these can never know thee,

There came a glorious morning, such a one As dawns but once a season. Mercury On such a morning would have flung himself From cloud to cloud, and swum with balanced wings

To some tall mountain when I said to her, "A day for Gods to stoop," she answered, Ay,

And men to soar:" for as that other gazed,
Shading his eyes till all the fiery cloud,
The prophet and the chariot and the steeds,
Suck'd into oneness like a little star
Were drunk into the inmost blue, we stood,
When first we came from out the pines at

noon,

With hands for eaves, uplooking and almost Waiting to see some blessed shape in heaven,

Never yet

So bathed we were in brilliance.
Before or after have I known the spring
Pour with such sudden deluges of light
Into the middle summer; for that day
Love, rising, shook his wings, and charged
the winds

With spiced May-sweets from bound to bound, and blew

Fresh fire into the sun, and from within

Burst thro' the heated buds, and sent his soul Into the songs of birds, and touch'd far off His mountain-altars, his high hills, with flame Milder and purer.

Thro' the rocks we wound: The great pine shook with lonely sounds of joy

That came on the sea-wind. As mountain

streams

Our bloods ran free: the sunshine seem'd to brood

More warmly on the heart than on the brow We often paused, and, looking back, we saw The clefts and openings in the mountains fill'd

With the blue valley and the glistening brooks,

And all the low dark groves, a land of love!
A land of promise, a land of memory,
A land of promise flowing with the milk
And honey of delicious memories!

And down to sea, and far as eye could ken,

Each way from verge to verge a Holy Land,
Still growing holier as you near'd the bay,
For there the Temple stood.
When we had reach'd
The grassy platform on some hill, I stoop'd,
I gather'd the wild herbs, and for her brows
And mine made garlands of the selfsame
flower,

Which she took smiling, and with my work thus

Crown'd her clear forehead. Once or twice she told me

(For I remember al! things) to let grow The flowers that run poison in their veins. She said, "The evil flourish in the world." Then playfully she gave herself the lie "Nothing in nature is unbeautiful; So, brother, pluck, and spare not." So I

wove

Ev'n the dull-blooded poppy-stem, "whose flower,

Hued with the scarlet of a fierce sunrise,
Like to the wild youth of an evil prince,
Is without sweetness, but who crowns him-
self

Above the secret poisons of his heart

In his old age." A graceful thought of hers Grav'n on my fancy! And oh, how like a nymph,

A stately mountain nymph, she look'd! how native

Unto the hills she trod on! While I gazed,
My coronal slowly disentwined itself
And fell between us both; tho' while I gazed
My spirit leap'd as with those thrills of bliss
That strike across the soul in prayer, and
show us

That we are surely heard. Methought a light Burst from the garland I had wov'n, and stood

A solid glory on her bright black hair:
A light methought broke from her dark, dark

eyes,

And shot itself into the singing winds:

A mystic light flash'd ev'n from her white robe

As from a glass in the sun, and fell about
My footsteps on the mountains.
Last we came
To what our people call "The Hill of Woe."
A bridge is there, that look'd at from be-
neath,

Seems but a cobweb filament to link
The yawning of an earthquake-cloven chasm,
And thence one night, when all the winds
were loud,

A woful man (for so the story went)
Had thrust his wife and child and dash'd
himself

Into the dizzy depth below. Below,
Fierce in the strength of far descent, a stream
Flies with a shatter'd foam along the chasm.

The path was perilous, loosely strewn with

And victories of ascent, and looking down
On all that had look'd down on us; and joy
In breathing nearer heaven; and joy to me,
High over all the azure-circled earth,
To breathe with her as if in heaven itself;
And more than joy that I to her became
Her guardian and her angel, raising her
Still higher, past all peril, until she saw
Beneath her feet the region far away,
Beyond the nearest mountain's bosky brows,
Burst into open prospect heath and hill,
And hollow lined and wooded to the lips,
And steep-down walls of battlemented rock
Gilded with broom, or shatter'd into spires,
And glory of broad waters interfused,
Whence rose as it were breath and steam of
gold,

And over all the great wood rioting

And climbing, streak'd or starr'd at intervals With falling brook or blossom'd bush - and last,

Framing the mighty landscape to the west,
A purple range of mountain-cones, between
Whose interspaces gush'd in blinding bursts
The incorporate blaze of sun and sea.
At length
Descending from the point and standing
both,

There on the tremulous bridge, that from beneath

Had seem'd a gossamer filament up in air, We paused amid the splendor. All the west And e'en unto the middle south was ribb'd And barr'd with bloom on bloom. The sun below,

Held for a space 'twixt cloud and wave, shower'd down

Rays of a mighty circle, weaving over
That various wilderness a tissue of light
Unparallel'd. On the other side, the moon,
Half melted into thin blue air, stood still
And pale and fibrous as a wither'd leaf,
Nor yet endured in presence of His eyes
To indue his lustre; most unlover-like,
Since in his absence full of light and joy,
And giving light to others. But this most,
Next to her presence whom I loved so well,
Spoke loudly even into my inmost heart
As to my outward hearing: the loud stream,
Forth issuing from his portals in the crag
(A visible link unto the home of my heart),
Ran amber toward the west, and nigh the sea
Parting my own loved mountains was re-
ceived,

Shorn of its strength, into the sympathy
Of that small bay, which out to open main
Glow'd intermingling close beneath the sun.
Spirit of Love! that little hour was bound
Shut in from Time, and dedicate to thee:
Thy fires from heaven had touched it, and
the earth

They fell on became hallow'd evermore.

We turn'd: our eyes met: hers were bright, and mine

Were dim with floating tears, that shot the

sunset

My will is one with thine; the Hill of Hope." Nevertheless, we did not change the name.

I did not speak; I could not speak my love. Love lieth deep: Love dwells not in lipdepths.

Love wraps his wings on either side the heart,

Constraining it with kisses close and warm,
Absorbing all the incense of sweet thoughts
So that they pass not to the shrine of sound.
Else had the life of that delighted hour
Drunk in the largeness of the utterance
Of Love; but how should Earthly measure

Who scarce can tune his high majestic sense Unto the thunder-song that wheels the spheres,

Scarce living in the Eolian harmony,
And flowing odor of the spacious air,
Scarce housed within the circle of this Earth,
Be cabin'd up in words and syllables,
Which pass with that which breathes them?
Sooner Earth

Might go round Heaven, and the straight girth of Time

Inswathe the fullness of Eternity,
Than language grasp the infinite of Love.

O day which did enwomb that happy hour, Thou art blessed in the years, divinest day! O Genius of that hour which dost uphold Thy coronal of glory like a God,

Amid thy melancholy mates far-seen,
Who walk before thee, ever turning round
To gaze upon thee till their eyes are dim
With dwelling on the light and depth of thine,
Thy name is ever worshipp'd among hours!
Had I died then, I had not seem'd to die,
For bliss stood round me like the light of
Heaven-

Had I died then, I had not known the death; Yea had the Power from whose right hand the light

Of Life issueth, and from whose. left hand floweth

The shadow of Death, perennial effluences, Whereof to all that draw the wholesome air Somewhile the one must overflow the other; Then had he stemm'd my day with night, and driven

My current to the fountain whence it sprang,

Even his own abiding excellence
On me, methinks, that shock of gloom had
fall'n

Unfelt, and in this glory I had merged
The other, like the sun I gazed upon,
Which seeming for the moment due to death,
And dipping his head low beneath the verge,
Yet bearing round about him his own day,
In confidence of unabated strength,
Steppeth from Heaven to Heaven, from light
to light,

And holdeth his undimmed forehead far
Into a clearer zenith, pure of cloud.

We trod the shadow of the downward hill;
We past from light to dark. On the other side
Is scoop'd a cavern and a mountain hall,
Which none have fathom'd. If you go far in
(The country people rumor) you may hear
The moaning of the woman and the child,
Shut in the secret chambers of the rock.
I too have heard a sound perchance of

streams

Running far on within its inmost halls,
The home of darkness; but the cavern-mouth,
Half overtrailed with a wanton weed,

Gives birth to a brawling brook, that passing lightly

Adown a natural stair of tangled roots,
Is presently received in a sweet grave
Of eglantines, a place of burial

Far lovelier than its cradle; for unseen
But taken with the sweetness of the place,
It makes a constant bubbling melody
That drowns the nearer echoes. Lower down
Spreads out a little lake, that, flooding, leaves
Low banks of yellow sand; and from the
woods

That belt it rise three dark, tall cypresses,
Three cypresses, symbols of mortal woe,
That men plant over graves.

Hither we came, And sitting down upon the golden moss, Held converse sweet and low low converse

sweet,

In which our voices bore least part. The wind Told a love tale beside us, how he woo'd

The waters, and the waters answering lisp'd
To kisses of the wind, that, sick with love,
Fainted at intervals, and grew again
To utterance of passion. Ye cannot shape
Fancy so fair as is this memory.
Methought all excellence that ever was
Had drawn herself from many thousand years,
And all the separate Edens of this earth,
To centre in this place and time. I listen'd,
And her words stole with most prevailing

sweetness

Into my heart, as thronging fancies come
To boys and girls when summer days are

new,

And soul and heart and body are all at ease:
What marvel my Camilla told me all?
It was so happy an hour, so sweet a place,
And I was as the brother of her blood,
And by that name I moved upon her breath:
Dear name, which had too much of nearness
in it

And heralded the distance of this time!
At first her voice was very sweet and low,
As if she were afraid of utterance;
But in the onward current of her speech
(As echoes of the hollow-banked brooks
Are fashion'd by the channel which they
keep),

Her words did of their meaning borrow sound, Her cheek did catch the color of her words. I heard and trembled, yet I could but hear; My heart paused my raised eyelids would not fall,

But still I kept my eyes upon the sky.
I seem'd the only part of Time stood still,
And saw the motion of all other things;
While her words, syllable by syllable,
Like water, drop by drop, upon my ear
Fell; and I wish'd, yet wish'd her not to
speak;

But she spake on, for I did name no wish.
What marvel my Camilla told me all
Her maiden dignities of Hope and Love -
"Perchance," she said, "return'd." Even

then the stars

Did tremble in their stations as I gazed: But she spake on, for I did name no wish, No wish no hope. Hope was not wholly

dead,

But breathing hard at the approach of
Death,

Camilla, my Camilla, who was mine
No longer in the dearest sense of mine-
For all the secret of her inmost heart
And all the maiden empire of her mind,
Lay like a map before me, and I saw
There, where I hoped myself to reign as king,
There, where that day I crown'd myself as
king,

There in my realm and even on my throne,
Another! Then it seem'd as tho' a link
Of some tight chain within my inmost frame
Was riven in twain: that life I heeded not
Flow'd from me, and the darkness of the