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[First published 1857.]
WE 1 were apart: yet, day by day, | |
| I bade my heart more constant be; | |
| I bade it keep the world away, | |
| And grow a home for only thee: | |
| Nor fear’d but thy love likewise grew, | 5 |
| Like mine, each day more tried, more true. | |
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| The fault was grave: I might have known, | |
| What far too soon, alas, I learn’d— | |
| The heart can bind itself alone, | |
| And faith is often unreturn’d.— | 10 |
| Self-sway’d our feelings ebb and swell: | |
| Thou lov’st no more: Farewell! Farewell! | |
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| Farewell! and thou, thou lonely heart, | |
| Which never yet without remorse | |
| Even for a moment did’st depart | 15 |
| From thy remote and spherèd course | |
| To haunt the place where passions reign, | |
| Back to thy solitude again! | |
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| Back, with the conscious thrill of shame | |
| Which Luna felt, that summer night, | 20 |
| Flash through her pure immortal frame, | |
| When she forsook the starry height | |
| To hang over Endymion’s sleep | |
| Upon the pine-grown Latmian steep;— | |
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| Yet she, chaste Queen, had never prov’d | 25 |
| How vain a thing is mortal love, | |
| Wandering in Heaven, far remov’d. | |
| But thou hast long had place to prove | |
| This truth—to prove, and make thine own: | |
| Thou hast been, shalt be, art, alone. | 30 |
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| Or, if not quite alone, yet they | |
| Which touch thee are unmating things— | |
| Ocean, and Clouds, and Night, and Day; | |
| Lorn Autumns and triumphant Springs; | |
| And life, and others’ joy and pain, | 35 |
| And love, if love, of happier men. | |
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| Of happier men—for they, at least, | |
| Have dream’d two human hearts might blend | |
| In one, and were through faith releas’d | |
| From isolation without end | 40 |
| Prolong’d, nor knew, although not less | |
| Alone than thou, their loneliness. | |
