Orpheus

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 (153