I’ve known the pregnant thinkers of this time, And stood by breathless, hanging on their lips, When some chromatic sequence of fine thought In learned modulation phrased itself To an unconjectured harmony of truth. And yet I’ve been more moved, more raised, I say, By a simple word ... a broken easy thing, A three-years infant might say after you,— A look, a sigh, a touch upon the palm, Which meant less than ‘I love you’ ... than by all The full-voiced rhetoric of those master-mouths. ‘Ah dear Aurora,’ he began at last, His pale lips fumbling for a sort of smile, ‘Your printer’s devils have not spoilt your heart: That’s well. And who knows but, long years ago, When you and I talked, you were somewhat right In being so peevish with me? You, at least, Have ruined no one through your dreams! Instead, You’ve helped the facile youth to live youth’s day With innocent distraction, still perhaps Suggestive of things better than your rhymes. The little shepherd-maiden, eight years old, I’ve seen upon the mountains of Vaucluse, Asleep i’ the sun, her head upon her knees, The flocks all scattered,—is more laudable Than any sheep-dog trained imperfectly, Who bites the kids through too much zeal.’ ‘I look As if I had slept, then?’ He was touched at once By something in my face. Indeed ’twas sure That he and I,—despite a year or two Of younger life on my side, and on his, The heaping of the years’ work on the days,— The three-hour speeches from the member’s seat, The hot committees, in and out the House, The pamphlets, ‘Arguments,’ ‘Collective Views,’ Tossed out as straw before sick houses, just To show one’s sick and so be trod to dirt, And no more use,—through this world’s underground The burrowing, groping effort, whence the arm And heart come bleeding,—sure, that he and I Were, after all, unequally fatigued! That he, in his developed manhood, stood A little sunburnt by the glare of life; While I ... it seemed no sun had shone on me, So many seasons I had forgot my Springs; My cheeks had pined and perished from their orbs, And all the youth-blood in them had grown white As dew on autumn cyclamens: alone My eyes and forehead answered for my face. He said ... ‘Aurora, you are changed—are ill!’ ‘Not so, my cousin,—only not asleep!’ I answered, smiling gently. ‘Let it be. You scarcely found the poet of Vaucluse As drowsy as the shepherds. What is art, But life upon the larger scale, the higher, When, graduating up in a spiral line Of still expanding and ascending gyres, It pushes toward the intense significance Of all things, hungry for the Infinite? Art’s life,—and where we live, we suffer and toil.’