Two years I have lived in a dream
And have dared not to end it—
Owned wealth in a measure supreme
And been fearful to spend it.
You, woman of beauty and love
In such noble wise fashioned,
Are my dreams and my rich treasure-trove.
I am shamed that, impassioned,
In secret I levy demands
Upon more than you've given—
Crave yourself, heart and soul, eyes and hands,
Which in sum make up heaven.
Unconscious of aught, through these days
You have let me be near you,
Knowing not how your thousand sweet ways
Only serve to endear you
To all in your orbit who move,
In such innocence wronging
As friendship what really is love
And unsatisfied longing.
Yet, your friendship—to be just your friend—
So caps love in another,
That I would my love, burned to its end,
In its own smoke might smother,
Lest I in an outbreak one day
Ask of friendship aught stronger—
When you may forbid me to say
Even "friend" any longer.
So I come in the old way and go,
While my heart's quickened beatings
Are hidden, and you never know
What I glean from our meetings;
How a word, a look even, which seems
So unconsciously meted,
Builds new dreams on the wreckage of dreams
That were never completed.
You once dropped a flower—did not see
That I hid in my bosom
What was more than Golconda to me,
And to you a bruised blossom.
Ten seconds I once held your hand
While you pulled from the river
A lily. Could you understand
Why my own hand should quiver?
Small matters these things you account
Who so lightly diffuse them,
But to all my life's joy they amount—
And my fear is, to lose them.
One day, when your eyes are still kind
And your voice is still tender,
I shall slip the control of my mind,
All my future surrender,
Obeying the primal desire
To fall down and adore you,
And outpour in one instant of fire
All the love I have for you.
'Twill be death, and far worse, at your feet
When my lips cease to blunder
And I look up your dear eyes to meet
Overrunning with wonder.
Thereafter—what? Nothing, I fear—
Even dreams will have vanished
When I by my act from your sphere
Shall for ever be banished.
Dear, that is the moment I dread—
When you hear my confession,
When the word I withhold has been said
And my love finds expression;
But till then (and God knows how I seek
To postpone and postpone it),
Till my love grows too strong, lips too weak
To much longer disown it,
I shall come, if I may, day by day,
My small gleanings to gather,
While you think of me—how shall we say?
As a brother or father;
And you never will guess, till you learn
From a heart brimming over,
That I've met you at every turn
As a passionate lover.