Chapter 33 I

I thought once how Theocritus had sung Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years, Who each one in a gracious hand appears To bear a gift for mortals, old or young: And, as I mused it in his antique tongue, I saw, in gradual vision through my tears, The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years, Those of my own life, who by turns had flung A shadow across me. Straightway I was ware, So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair: And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,-- Guess now who holds thee? -- Death, I said. But, there,

The silver answer rang,-- Not Death, but Love. II But only three in all Gods universe Have heard this word thou hast said,--Himself, beside Thee speaking, and me listening ! One of us . . . that was God, . . . and laid the curse So darkly on my eyelids, as to amerce My sight from seeing thee,--that if I had died, The deathweights, placed there, would have signed Less absolute exclusion. Nay is worse From God than from all others, O my friend! Men could not part us with their worldly jars, Nor the seas change us, nor the tempests bend; Our hands would touch for all the mountain-bars:

And, heaven being rolled between us at the end, We should but vow the faster for the stars. III Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart ! Unlike our uses and our destinies. Our ministering two angels look surprise On one another, as they strike athwart Their wings in passing. Thou, bethink thee, art A guest for queens to social pageants, With gages from a hundred brighter eyes Than tears even can make mine, to play thy part Of chief musician. What hast thou to do? With looking from the lattice-lights at me, A poor, tired, wandering singer, singing through The dark, and leaning up a cypress tree?

The chrism is on thine head,--on mine, the dew,-- And Death must dig the level where these agree.