What is that joy which serene infancy
Perceives not, as the hours content them by, _155
Each in a chain of blossoms, yet enjoys
The shapes of this new world, in giant toys
Wrought by the busy … ever new?
Remembrance borrows Fancy's glass, to show
These forms more … sincere _160
Than now they are, than then, perhaps, they were.
When everything familiar seemed to be
Wonderful, and the immortality
Of this great world, which all things must inherit,
Was felt as one with the awakening spirit, _165
Unconscious of itself, and of the strange
Distinctions which in its proceeding change
It feels and knows, and mourns as if each were
A desolation…
…
Were it not a sweet refuge, Emily, _170
For all those exiles from the dull insane
Who vex this pleasant world with pride and pain,
For all that band of sister-spirits known
To one another by a voiceless tone?
…
If day should part us night will mend division _175
And if sleep parts us—we will meet in vision
And if life parts us—we will mix in death
Yielding our mite [?] of unreluctant breath
Death cannot part us—we must meet again
In all in nothing in delight in pain: _180
How, why or when or where—it matters not
So that we share an undivided lot…
…
And we will move possessing and possessed
Wherever beauty on the earth's bare [?] breast
Lies like the shadow of thy soul—till we _185
Become one being with the world we see…
NOTES: _52-_53 afraid The cj. A.C. Bradley. _54 And as cj. Rossetti, A.C. Bradley. _61 stone… cj. A.C. Bradley. _155 them]trip or troop cj. A.C. Bradley. _157 in]as cj. A.C. Bradley.
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