She speaks.
Last night you told me, where we, parting, waited,
Of love somehow I’d known before you told.—
Long, long ago, perhaps, this love was fated,
For why was it made suddenly so old?
Is it because the love we have and cherish
Born with us seems, and as ourselves shall last?
Part of our lives, we can not let it perish
Out of our present’s future or its past?
Yet, all was changed; and, still, I did not wonder
That, robed in vaster splendor, broke the dawn:
Nor marvel that, beside my feet and under,
Each flower seemed fairer than the flower gone.
The wild bird’s silvery warble seemed completer;
A whiter magic filled the morn and noon,
And night—each night!—seemed holier grown and sweeter
With Babylonian witchcraft of the moon.—
Is love an emanation? whose ideal
Communicates its beauty?—Is it moved
Through some strange means to consecrate the real?
Making the world the worthier to be loved?