And shaped to dubious order, word and act: That, just because he loved me over all, All wealth, all lands, all social privilege, To which chance made him unexpected heir,— And, just because on all these lesser gifts, Constrained by conscience and the sense of wrong He had stamped with steady hand God’s arrow-mark Of dedication to the human need, He thought it should be so too, with his love; He, passionately loving, would bring down His love, his life, his best, (because the best) His bride of dreams, who walked so still and high Through flowery poems as through meadow-grass, The dust of golden lilies on her feet, That _she_ should walk beside him on the rocks In all that clang and hewing out of men, And help the work of help which was his life, And prove he kept back nothing,—not his soul. And when I failed him,—for I failed him, I— And when it seemed he had missed my love,—he thought, ‘Aurora makes room for a working-noon;’ And so, self-girded with torn strips of hope, Took up his life, as if it were for death, (Just capable of one heroic aim,) And threw it in the thickest of the world,— At which men laughed as if he had drowned a dog: No wonder,—since Aurora failed him first! The morning and the evening made his day. But oh, the night! oh, bitter-sweet! oh, sweet! O dark, O moon and stars, O ecstasy Of darkness! O great mystery of love,— In which absorbed, loss, anguish, treason’s self Enlarges rapture,—as a pebble dropt In some full wine-cup, over-brims the wine! While we two sate together, leaned that night So close, my very garments crept and thrilled With strange electric life; and both my cheeks Grew red, then pale, with touches from my hair In which his breath was; while the golden moon Was hung before our faces as the badge Of some sublime inherited despair, Since ever to be seen by only one,— A voice said, low and rapid as a sigh, Yet breaking, I felt conscious, from a smile,— ‘Thank God, who made me blind, to make me see! Shine on, Aurora, dearest light of souls, Which rul’st for evermore both day and night! I am happy.’ I flung closer to his breast, As sword that, after battle, flings to sheathe; And, in that hurtle of united souls, The mystic motions which in common moods Are shut beyond our sense, broke in on us, And, as we sate, we felt the old earth spin, And all the starry turbulence of worlds Swing round us in their audient circles, till If that same golden moon were overhead Or if beneath our feet, we did not know.