Clothed was she like a nun, and yet her vesture Did sad despite unto her merry grace, As gaily she came forward with a gesture As gamesome as the childhood in her face, That I had seen so long downcast and sad, Robbed of the happy birthright which she had, Which earth may steal away but not replace. There is no sorrow like the slow heart-searing, When phantoms bred of earth spring up between Two loving hearts, who grew to their endearing, When all their pushing tendrils yet were green: No time-struck ruin is so sad to see As youth’s disease: than thus, O Love, to be, ’Twere better for thy honour not to have been. Had I not seen the servitude of folly, The mínute-measuring of days and nights, With superstition preaching melancholy And pleasure counterfeiting her own rights; Afraid to turn again and look behind, Lest truth should flame and overwhelm the mind, Fanning her red regret of old delights. The mimicry of woe that is a trouble To them that practise it, but which to those To whom the joy is owed makes sorrow double Seeing the debtor destitute that owes. The tinselling of cruel bars, to blind The cagèd bird to think the hand is kind Which liberty denies and food bestows. From which I hurried as a beast from burning, Nor cared in flying where my terror led; Only beyond recall and past returning, Nor now repent if then too far I fled.— So long, dear life, as in my flesh thou reign’st I will sin with thee rather than against, Let me die living rather than live dead. But neither is there human pleasure rarer Than love’s renewal after long disdain, Nor any touching tale for telling fairer Than that wherein lost lovers meet again: Such joy must happy souls beyond the grave, If once again they meet, in Heaven have, Without which all the joys of Heaven were vain. ’Twas even thus she came and in my dreaming, My pleasure was not less than Heaven’s may be: The spiritual and unearthly seeming So far outdid a touched reality: As glances sent in love do more than tell What words can never phrase or utter well, And which ’tis shame and blindness not to see. But now the joy was mine, for gentle pity Of her who wearily lived long alone With mopes and mummers in a sensuous city That held no passion equal to her own, For gentle pity, I say, constrained me well, As pains those separated souls they tell Prepare for Heaven, and mould their hearts of stone.