XXIV.

When, if I think but deep enough,

You are wont to answer, prompt as rhyme; And you, too, find without rebuff

Response your soul seeks many a time, Piercing its fine flesh-stuff.

XXV.

My own, confirm me! If I tread
This path back, is it not in pride
To think how little I dreamed it led
To an age so blest that, by its side,
Youth seems the waste instead?

XXVI.

My own, see where the years conduct!
At first, 'twas something our two souls
Should mix as mists do; each is sucked
In each now; on, the new stream rolls,
Whatever rocks obstruct.

XXVII.

Think, when our one soul understands

The great Word which makes all things new, When earth breaks up and heaven expands, How will the change strike me and you In the house not made with hands?

XXVIII.

Oh! I must feel your brain prompt mine,
Your heart anticipate my heart,

You must be just before, in fine,

See and make me see, for your part, New depths of the divine!

XXIX.

But who could have expected this
When we two drew together first
Just for the obvious human bliss,
To satisfy life's daily thirst
With a thing men seldom miss?

XXX.

Come back with me to the first of all,
Let us lean and love it over again,
Let us now forget and now recall,
Break the rosary in a pearly rain,
And gather what we let fall!

XXXI.

What did I say?—that a small bird sings
All day long, save when a brown pair
Of hawks from the wood float with wide wings
Strained to a bell; 'gainst noonday glare
You count the streaks and rings.

XXXII.

But at afternoon or almost eve

'Tis better; then the silence grows
To that degree, you half believe
It must get rid of what it knows,
Its bosom does so heave.

XXXIII.

Hither we walked then, side by side,
Arm in arm and cheek to cheek,
And still I questioned or replied,

While my heart, convulsed to really speak, Lay choking in its pride.

XXXIV.

Silent the crumbling bridge we cross,
And pity and praise the chapel sweet,

And care about the fresco's loss,

And wish for our souls a like retreat, And wonder at the moss.

XXXV.

Stoop and kneel on the settle under,

Look through the window's grated square: Nothing to see! For fear of plunder, The cross is down and the altar bare, As if thieves don't fear thunder.

XXXVI.

We stoop and look in through the grate,

See the little porch and rustic door,

Read duly the dead builder's date ;

Then cross the bridge that we crossed before, Take the path again--but wait!

XXXVII.

Oh moment one and infinite!

The water slips o'er stock and stone;

The West is tender, hardly bright:

How gray at once is the evening grown

One star, its chrysolite !

XXXVIII.

We two stood there with never a third,
But each by each, as each knew well:
The sights we saw and the sounds we heard,
The lights and the shades made up a spell
Till the trouble grew and stirred.

XXXIX.

Oh, the little more, and how much it is!
And the little less, and what worlds away!
How a sound shall quicken content to bliss,
Or a breath suspend the blood's best play,
And life be a proof of this!

XL.

Had she willed it, still had stood the screen
So slight, so sure, 'twixt my love and her:
I could fix her face with a guard between,
And find her soul as when friends confer,
Friends-lovers that might have been.

XLI.

For my heart had a touch of the woodland time.
Wanting to sleep now over its best.
Shake the whole tree in the summer-prime,

But bring to the last leaf no such test!

Hold the last fast!" runs the rhyme.

XLII.

For a chance to make your little much,
To gain a lover and lose a friend,
Venture the tree and a myriad such,

When nothing you mar but the year can mend : But a last leaf-fear to touch!

XLIII.

Yet should it unfasten itself and fall
Eddying down till it find your face
At some slight wind-best chance of all!
Be your heart henceforth its dwelling-place
You trembled to forestall!

XLIV.

Worth how well, those dark gray eyes,
That hair so dark and dear, how worth
That a man should strive and agonize,
And taste a veriest hell on earth

For the hope of such a prize!

XLV.

You might have turned and tried a man,
Set him a space to weary and wear,
And prove which suited more your plan,
His best of hope or his worst despair,
Yet end as he began.

XLVI.

But you spared me this, like the heart you are, And filled my empty heart at a word.

If two lives join, there is oft a scar,

They are one and one, with a shadowy third; One near one is too far.

XLVII.

A moment after, and hands unseen

Were hanging the night around us fast; But we knew that a bar was broken between Life and life: we were mixed at last

In spite of the mortal screen.

XLVIII.

The forests had done it; there they stood;
We caught for a moment the powers at play :
They had mingled us so, for once and good,
Their work was done-we might go or stay,
They relapsed to their ancient mood.

XLIX.

How the world is made for each of us!
How all we perceive and know in it
Tends to some moment's product thus,
When a soul declares itself--to wit,
By its fruit, the thing it does!

L.

Be hate that fruit, or love that fruit,
It forwards the general deed of man,
And each of the Many helps to recruit
The life of the race by a general plan :
Each living his own, to boot.

LI.

I am named and known by that moment's feat ; There took my station and degree;

So grew my own small life complete,

As nature obtained her best of me--One born to love you, sweet!