And his smile, as nymphs from their laving meres, Trembled up from a bath of tears; And joy, like a mew sea-rocked apart, Tossed on the wave of his troubled heart.
For he saw what she did not see, That—as kindled by its own fervency— The verge shrivelled inward smoulderingly:
And suddenly 'twixt his hand and hers He knew the twenty withered years— No flower, but twenty shrivelled years.
"Was never such thing until this hour," Low to his heart he said; "the flower Of sleep brings wakening to me, And of oblivion memory.
"Was never this thing to me," he said, "Though with bruisèd poppies my feet are red!" And again to his own heart very low: "O child! I love, for I love and know;
"But you, who love nor know at all The diverse chambers in Love's guest-hall, Where some rise early, few sit long: In how differing accents hear the throng His great Pentecostal tongue;
"Who know not love from amity, Nor my reported self from me; A fair fit gift is this, meseems, You give—this withering flower of dreams.
"O frankly fickle, and fickly true, Do you know what the days will do to you? To your Love and you what the days will do, O frankly fickle, and fickly true?
"You have loved me, Fair, three lives—or days: 'Twill pass with the passing of my face. But where I go, your face goes too, To watch lest I play false to you.
"I am but, my sweet, your foster-lover, Knowing well when certain years are over You vanish from me to another; Yet I know, and love, like the foster-mother.