When we were men, and had striven, and known pain, By a dark canal debating, unresigned, On the blind fate that shadows humankind, On the blind sword that severs human love... Then did the hidden belfry from above On troubled minds in benediction shed The patience of the great anonymous dead Who reared those towers, those high cathedrals builded In solemn stone, and with clear fancy gilded A beauty beyond ours, trusting in God. Then dared we follow the dark way they trod, And bowing to the universal plan Trust in the true and fiery spirit of Man. And you, my Brother, You know, as knows one other, How my spirit revisiteth a room In a high wing, beneath pine-trees, where gloom Dwelleth, dispelled by resinous wood embers, Where, in half-darkness ... How the heart remembers... We talked of beauty, and those fiery things To which the divine desirous spirit clings, In a wing’d rapture to that heaven flinging, Where beauty is an easy thing, and singing The natural speech of man. Like kissing swords Our wits clashed there; the brittle beauty of words Breaking, seemed to discover its secret heart And all the rapt elusiveness of Art. Now I have known sorrow, and now I sing That a lovely word is not an idle thing; For as with stars the cloth of night is spangled, With star-like words, most lovelily entangled, The woof of sombre thought is deckt.... Ah, bright And cold they glitter in the spirit’s night! But neither distant nor dispassionate; For beauty is an armour against fate.... I tell you, who have stood in the dark alone. Seeing the face that turneth all to stone, Medusa, blind with hate, While I was dying, Beauty sate with me Nor tortured any longer; gracious was she; To her soft words I listened, and was content To die, nor sorry that my light was spent. So, Brother, if I come not home, Go to that little room That my spirit revisiteth, and there, Somewhere in the blue air, you shall discover If that you be a lover Nor haughtily minded, all that once half-shaped Then fled us, and escaped: All that I found that day, Far, so far away.