| Andrew Macphail, comp. The Book of Sorrow. 1916. | | | XVIII. The Great Mystery
He and I | | By Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) |
| | | WHENCE came his feet into my field, and why? | |
| How is it that he sees it all so drear? | |
| How do I see his seeing, and how hear | |
| The name his bitter silence knows it by? | |
| This was the little fold of separate sky | 5 |
| Whose pasturing clouds in the soul’s atmosphere | |
| Drew living light from one continual year: | |
| How should he find it lifeless? He, or I? | |
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| Lo! this new Self now wanders round my field, | |
| With plaints for every flower, and for each tree | 10 |
| A moan, the sighing wind’s auxiliary: | |
| And o’er sweet waters of my life, that yield | |
| Unto his lips no draught but tears unseal’d, | |
| Even in my place he weeps. Even I, not he. | | | | |
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