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1
WHY will you haunt me unawares, | |
| And walk into my sleep, | |
| Pacing its shadowy thoroughfares, | |
| Where long-dried perfume scents the airs, | |
| While ghosts of sorrow creep, | 5 |
| Where on Hope’s ruined altar-stairs, | |
| With ineffectual beams, | |
| The Moon of Memory coldly glares | |
| Upon the land of dreams? | |
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| My yearning eyes were fain to look | 10 |
| Upon your hidden face; | |
| Their love, alas! you could not brook, | |
| But in your own you mutely took | |
| My hand, and for a space | |
| You wrung it till I throbbed and shook, | 15 |
| And woke with wildest moan | |
| And wet face channelled like a brook | |
| With your tears or my own. | |
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2
We met as strangers on life’s lonely way, | |
| And yet it seemed we knew each other well; | 20 |
| There was no end to what thou hadst to say, | |
| Or to the thousand things I found to tell. | |
| My heart, long silent, at thy voice that day | |
| Chimed in my breast like to a silver bell. | |
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| How much we spoke, and yet still left untold | 25 |
| Some secret half revealed within our eyes: | |
| Didst thou not love me once in ages old? | |
| Had I not called thee with importunate cries, | |
| And, like a child left sobbing in the cold, | |
| Listened to catch from far thy fond replies? | 30 |
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| We met as strangers, and as such we part; | |
| Yet all my life seems leaving me with thine; | |
| Ah, to be clasped once only heart to heart, | |
| If only once to feel that thou wert mine! | |
| These lips are locked, and yet I know thou art | 35 |
| That all in all for which my soul did pine. | |
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