So sped my wooing: now I surely think
Suspended here upon the burning brink
Of this dim agony, invading sense,
That bliss should still abide : but now I shrink,
Fall from the crags of memory, and abide
Now in this nature-life, basilisk-eyed,
And serpent-stinging: yea, I perish thence.
That perishes which was: and I am tied
Unto myself: the “I” springs up again
Bound to the wheel of speedless sense and pain,
None loosing me. Past is the utter bliss ;
Present the strong fact of the death, the stain
Of the marred lives: I meditate awhile
Not on the mere light of the girl, the smile
Deepening down to the extremest kiss;
Not of the long joys of the little isle
Set in Ionian waters, where the years
Passed, one long passion, too divine for tears,
Too deep for laughter: but on that divine
Sense beyond sense, the shadow of the spheres
Lost in the all-pervading light of love:
That bliss all passion and all praise above ;
Impersonal, that fervour of the shrine
Changed to pure peace that had its substance of
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