“My right to love, and thine to know,

The life-stream, in its seaward flow,

Glides, chainless, ’neath the drifted snow.”

Wherever it listeth the free-born wind bloweth:

Wherever it willeth the stream of song floweth:

It revels in twin-light—its lone threads run single;

It passeth calm seas with wild Caspians to mingle.

If blest with true life-mate, in roughest of weather,

They join their glad voices and rush on together;

If lost in a lake whose fair surface is calmer,