Which followed him avoid me, and foul forms Seek me, which ne'er could fasten on his mind; And though I feel how low I am to him, Yet I aim not even to catch a tone Of harmonies he called profusely up; So, one gleam still remains, although the last." Remember me who praise thee e'en with tears, For never more shall I walk calm with thee; Thy sweet imaginings are as an air, A melody some wondrous singer sings, Which, though it haunt men oft in the still eve, They dream not to essay; yet it no less But more is honored. I was thine in shame, And now when all thy proud renown is out, I am a watcher whose eyes have grown dim With looking for some star which breaks on him Altered and worn and weak and full of tears. Autumn has come like spring returned to us, Won from her girlishness; like one returned A friend that was a lover, nor forgets The first warm love, but full of sober thoughts Of fading years; whose soft mouth quivers yet With the old smile, but yet so changed and still! And here am I the scoffer, who have probed Life's vanity, won by a word again Into my own life--by one little word Of this sweet friend who lives in loving me, Lives strangely on my thoughts and looks and words, As fathoms down some nameless ocean thing Its silent course of quietness and joy. O dearest, if indeed I tell the past, May'st thou forget it as a sad sick dream! Or if it linger--my lost soul too soon Sinks to itself and whispers we shall be But closer linked, two creatures whom the earth Bears singly, with strange feelings unrevealed Save to each other; or two lonely things Created by some power whose reign is done, Having no part in God or his bright world. I am to sing whilst ebbing day dies soft, As a lean scholar dies worn o'er his book, And in the heaven stars steal out one by one As hunted men steal to their mountain watch. I must not think, lest this new impulse die In which I trust; I have no confidence: So, I will sing on fast as fancies come; Rudely, the verse being as the mood it paints. I strip my mind bare, whose first elements I shall unveil--not as they struggle forth In infancy, nor as they now exist, When I am grown above them and can rule-- But in that middle stage when they were full Yet ere I had disposed them to my will; And then I shall show how these elements Produced my present state, and what it is.