This carven column whereon monsters cling
And twist among themselves with ravening jaws,
They seem to pant, and grip with mighty claws,
And from each other anguished cries to wring--
This was my soul before it knew thyself,
Oh, thou the ever new, the ever old!
Who earnest forth to me from deeps of self
Ardour between thy hands and joy untold.
I breathe a scent of faint familiar flow'rs
Within thy heart that sleep;
And thirsty memory drinks deep
Of kindred echoes from past years of ours;
At the same instants in our childhood, tears,
Unknowing, we have wept;
We must have known like gladness and like fears,
Like trysts with grief have kept;
Long since was I bound to thee as thine own
By One who came, inscrutable, unknown,
Upon my life's adventurous battle field.
Oh! had I searched His face, forgetting fear,
I should have known thine eyes this many a year,
That there between his eyelids were reveal'd!