Long, long ago, when all the glittering earth Was heaven itself, when drunkards in the street Were like mazed kings shaking at giving birth To acts of war that sickle men like wheat; When the white clover opened Paradise And God lived in a cottage up the brook, Beauty, you lifted up my sleeping eyes And filled my heart with longing with a look. And all the day I searched but could not find The beautiful dark-eyed who touched me there. Delight in her made trouble in my mind. She was within all nature, everywhere. The breath I breathed, the brook, the flower, the grass, Were her, her word, her beauty, all she was. XXVII. Night came again, but now I could not sleep; The owls were watching in the yew, the mice Gnawed at the wainscot. The mid dark was deep. The death-watch knocked the dead man's summons thrice. The cats upon the pointed housetops peered About the chimneys, with lit eyes which saw Things in the darkness, moving, which they feared; The midnight filled the quiet house with awe. So, creeping down the stair, I drew the bolt And passed into the darkness, and I knew That beauty was brought near by my revolt. Beauty was in the moonlight, in the dew, But more within myself, whose venturous tread Walked the dark house where death-ticks called the dead. XXVIII. Even after all these years there comes the dream Of lovelier life than this in some new earth, In the full summer of that unearthly gleam Which lights the spirit when the brain gives birth; Of a perfected I, in happy hours, Treading above the sea that trembles there, A path through thickets of immortal flowers That only grow where sorrows never were; And, at a turn, of coming face to face With Beauty's self, that Beauty I have sought In women's hearts, in friends, in many a place, In barren hours passed at grips with thought, Beauty of woman, comrade, earth and sea, Incarnate thought come face to face with me. XXIX. If I could come again to that dear place Where once I came, where Beauty lived and moved, Where, by the sea, I saw her face to face, That soul alive by which the world has loved; If, as I stood at gaze among the leaves, She would appear again as once before, While the red herdsmen gathered up his sheaves And brimming waters trembled up the shore; If, as I gazed, her Beauty that was dumb, In that old time, before I learned to speak, Would lean to me and revelation come, Words to the lips and colour to the cheek, Joy with its searing-iron would burn me wise; I should know all, all powers, all mysteries. XXX.