For as our love found depths too deep; As absence almost deadened sense; As often I awoke from sleep And looked for hours at you, all tense, Lest you awake and see my eyes, Where the one thought of purest love Shone like a fixed star’s paradise, I learned to know that Self above-- Making the heart’s hierarchy pure-- Stands the archangel Truth, preferred-- Throned over Love which can endure Only where Truth has stood, unstirred. Watchful and with his torch of stars Held o’er Love’s face, although it shows The forehead’s pain, the bosom’s scars, The cheeks bleached out from secret tears In memory of impalpable blows, Shed in the night’s long solitude. You see I could not give you truth! There was the Shadow in my life Cast by the fierce Sun of my youth. And as our day fell to the west The Shadow lengthened and the strife ’Twixt Love and Truth within my breast Waxed fiercer. Heaven’s deathless blue Leaned on my hungering soul and pained Its wings, as if a joy were lost, Or never had been quite attained, Or captured at too great a cost. I could not give you truth all true. My love for you and then the thirst For all your love, made me accursed Of fear that if you knew me first, Just as I am, your heart would cease To cherish mine. And then much more Was this fear venom to my peace When all the world spread out before Our astonished eyes, as our own world, And we its children, each for each. This was the sleepless worm which curled In my heart’s petals, at the root Where my heart’s sweetness had its source. You never saw the worm! My speech Poised like a bee who knows the loot Of honey’s gone, and turns his course. I kept the petals closed, and you Breathed at their tips, but would have known All of their fragrance, or of blight. That’s love--to have no place where light And understanding have not shone. Your face reproached me--I who knew No sweet or bitter essences Can be withheld from Love that keeps An onward flight, which ever sees, Or would see, all in the heart’s deeps.