"Away, away! This was not truly thee—
A mortal bravery, Time's delinquency,
A dream that held me from thee, thee from me.
"It was not in these bodies that we drew
Near, nearer: never, never by these we knew
Transfusion past all sense of 'I' and 'You.'
"It was youth's blindness held the body so dear:
Slowly, slowly, year after bewildered year,
The dark thinned and the eyes of love grew clear,
"And thought following thought, enlinking each,
Ran where the delighting body could not reach,
And had speech when there was no voice for speech;
"So that we scarce grieved when those bodies died,
And our eyes more than our true spirits cried;
But as when trees fall, the free wind that sighed
"Awhile in their fond branches ceases not,
But sings a moment over the cumbered spot,
Then flies away:—our unentangled thought,
"Our vivid spirits of love, unbroken moved
And lifted no more sense-confined, and roved
And knew till then we had not utterly loved ...
"Leave now this dust!"
And then the dust will sink,
The upheaved mound to its old shape will shrink,
And we shall turn again from Time's dusk brink.