When I was as a man that hopeless pines,
And pitfalls all my hours were,
You were the light that welcomed home the wanderer,
The light that from the frosted window shines
On snow at dead of night.
Your spirit's hospitable light
Touched my heart, and hurt it not,
Like a cool hand on one with fever hot!
A element word of green, reviving hope
Ran down the piled wrack of my heart's waste slope;
Then came stout confidence and right good will,
Frankness, and tenderness, and at the last,
With hand in hand held fast,
An evening of clear understanding and of storms grown still.
Since, though the summer followed winter's chill,
Both in ourselves and under skies whose deathless fires
With gold all pathways of our thoughts adorn,
Though love has grown immense, a great flower born
Of proud desires,
A flower that, without cease, to grow still more,
In our hearts begins as e'er before,
I still look at the little light
Which first shone out on me in my soul's night.