And learn from my lips the truth of my story. There's nothing strange in what I shall tell you, Nothing mysterious, nothing unearthly, -- But damnably human, -- and you shall hear it. Not one of those little black lawyers had guessed it; The judge, with his big bald head, never knew it; And the jury (God rest their poor souls!) never dreamed it. Once there were three in the world who could tell it; Now there are two. There'll be two to-morrow, -- You, my friend, and -- But there's the story: -- When I was a boy the world was heaven. I never knew then that the men and the women Who petted and called me a brave big fellow Were ever less happy than I; but wisdom -- Which comes with the years, you know -- soon showed me The secret of all my glittering childhood, The broken key to the fairies' castle That held my life in the fresh, glad season When I was the king of the earth. Then slowly -- And yet so swiftly! -- there came the knowledge That the marvellous life I had lived was my life; That the glorious world I had loved was my world; And that every man, and every woman, And every child was a different being, Wrought with a different heat, and fired With passions born of a single spirit; That the pleasure I felt was not their pleasure, Nor my sorrow -- a kind of nameless pity For something, I knew not what -- their sorrow. And thus was I taught my first hard lesson, -- The lesson we suffer the most in learning: That a happy man is a man forgetful Of all the torturing ills around him. When or where I first met the woman I cherished and made my wife, no matter. Enough to say that I found her and kept her Here in my heart with as pure a devotion As ever Christ felt for his brothers. Forgive me For naming His name in your patient presence; But I feel my words, and the truth I utter Is God's own truth. I loved that woman, -- Not for her face, but for something fairer, Something diviner, I thought, than beauty: I loved the spirit -- the human something That seemed to chime with my own condition, And make soul-music when we were together; And we were never apart, from the moment My eyes flashed into her eyes the message That swept itself in a quivering answer Back through my strange lost being. My pulses Leapt with an aching speed; and the measure Of this great world grew small and smaller, Till it seemed the sky and the land and the ocean Closed at last in a mist all golden Around us two. And we stood for a season Like gods outflung from chaos, dreaming That we were the king and the queen of the fire That reddened the clouds of love that held us Blind to the new world soon to be ours -- Ours to seize and sway. The passion