Our hands would touch for all the mountain-bars:

And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,--

Those of my own life, who by turns had flung

Of chief musician. What hast thou to do

I thought once how Theocritus had sung

Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart !

III

And Death must dig the level where these agree.

The sweet, sad years, read.99csw.comthe melancholy years,

The dark, and leaning up a cypress tree ?

But only three in all Gods universe

Unlike our uses and our destinies.

On one another, as they strike athwart

Guess now who holds thee ? -- Death, I said. But, there,

Than tears even can make mine, to play thy part

A九-九-藏-書 poor, tired, wandering singer, singing through

We should but vow the faster for the stars.

A shadow across me. Straightway I was ware,

Men could not part us with their worldly jars,

Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,

With looking from the lattice-lights at me,

So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move

Who each one in a gracioread.99csw.comus hand appears

With gages from a hundred brighter eyes

The silver answer rang,-- Not Death, but Love.

To bear a gift for mortals, old or young:

The deathweights, placed there, would have signified

Nor the seas change us, nor the tempests bend;

I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,

The chrism is on thine head,--on mine, the dew,--

Thee speaking, and me listen九-九-藏-書ing ! and replied

Their wings in passing. Thou, bethink thee, art

So darkly on my eyelids, as to amerce

My sight from seeing thee,--that if I had died,

And, heaven being rolled between us at the end,

Less absolute exclusion. Nay is worse

Have heard this word thou hast said,--Himself, beside

From God than from all others, O my friend !