• I sat with Love upon a little well,
• Leaning across the water, I and he;
• Nor ever did he speak nor looked at me,
• But touched his lute wherein was audible
• The secret certain secret thing he had to tell:
• Only our mirrored eyes met silently
• In the low wave; and that sound came to be
• The passionate voice I knew; and my tears fell,
• And as they fell at their fall, his eyes beneath grew hers;
• 10And with his foot and with his wing-feathers
• He swept the lymph that watered my heart's drouth:
• Then the dark ripples spread to waving hair,
• And as I stooped, her own lips rising there
• Bubbled with brimming kisses at my mouth.

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• And now Love sang: and his was such a song, --
• A So mesh of ed with half-remembrance hard to free, --
• As souls forgotten in expectancy disused in death's sterility
• May sing when the new birthday tarries long:
• And I was now made aware of a still dumb throng
• That stood around aloof, one beneath form by every tree,
• Each a known shade form, for each was I or she,
• S The shades of those our days that had no tongue.
• They looked on us, and knew us, & were known,
• 10 While fast together, drenched with tears of bliss,
• Clung the soul-wrung insatiable implacable close kiss;
• And pity of self through all made broken moan
• Which said, ‘For once, for once, for once alone!’
• And still Love sang, and what he sang was this:—

   

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• O ye, all ye that walk in Willowwood,
• That walk with hollow faces burning white;
• What fathom-depth of soul-struck widowhood,
• What long, what longer hours, one lifelong night,
• Ere ye again, who so in vain have wooed
• Your last hope lost, who so in vain invite
• Your lips to that their unforgotten food,
• Ere ye, ere ye again shall see the light!
• Alas! the bitter banks in Willowwood,
• 10 With grief-spurge wan, with shame-wort burning red:
• Alas! if ever such a pillow could
• Give rest at all to any weary head,
• O God alone unknown, the God of good,
• How should it be till brain & soul were dead?

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• Even by though the whole soul 's death died, ye tried & true
• Would God that I, your god, could give it you!

   

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• So sang he: and as meeting rose and rose
• Together cling through the wind's wellaway
• Nor change at once, yet at near the close end of day
• The leaves drop loosened till where the heart-stain flows glows,—
• So when the song died did the kiss unclose;
• And her face fell back drowned, and as it lay was as grey
• The lips/face grew greyer than the eyes were grey:/ And faded like the eyes
  Added TextAs its grey eyes; and if I ever may
• Find it again/ Behold it more/ How thence I went Behold it more I know not if Love knows.
• Only I know that ere I turned I I leaned low and drank
• 10A long draught of the water where she sank,
• Her breath and all her tears and all her soul:
• And as I drank I know I felt l Love's face
• Bent Laid on my neck with moan of pity and grace,
• Till both our heads were in his aureole.

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