Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900.djvu/823

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683. ii

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 pageantries,
  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.


684. iii

Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore
  Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
  Serenely in the sunshine as before,
  Without the sense of that which I forbore—
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
  With pulses that beat double. What I do
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
  Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine,
  And sees within my eyes the tears of two.