Half glad and half afraid?
The air
Is an unspoken prayer;
Your eyes look all one way.
Who is the secret visitor
Your tremors would betray?”
It was a slight thing, which I had never thought particularly well of; but on her lips it achieved a music unimagined before.
“Your voice,” said I, “makes it beautiful, as it makes all words beautiful. Yes, I have written some small bits of verse during my exile, but they have been different from those of mine which you honour with your praise. They have had another, a more wonderful, theme—a theme all too high for them, which nevertheless spurred them to their best. They have at least one merit—they speak the truth from my heart.” As I spoke I felt myself leaning forward, though not of set purpose, and my voice sank almost to a whisper.
“One of them,” I continued, begins in this way:
“A moonbeam or a breath, above thine eyes I bow,