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 XXVI. My own, see where the years conduct! 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, 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 XXX. Come back with me to the first of all, XXXI. What did I say?—that a small bird sings XXXII. But at afternoon or almost eve 'Tis better; then the silence grows XXXIII. Hither we walked then, side by side, While my heart, convulsed to really speak, Lay choking in its pride. XXXIV. Silent the crumbling bridge we cross, 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, XXXIX. Oh, the little more, and how much it is! XL. Had she willed it, still had stood the screen XLI. For my heart had a touch of the woodland time. 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, When nothing you mar but the year can mend : But a last leaf-fear to touch! XLIII. Yet should it unfasten itself and fall XLIV. Worth how well, those dark gray eyes, For the hope of such a prize! XLV. You might have turned and tried a man, 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; XLIX. How the world is made for each of us! L. Be hate that fruit, or love that fruit, 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! |