He.  But the world is not chance, except to those Most feeble in desire:  who needeth aught Shall have it, if he fill his soul with the need.  While still our ignorant lives were drowned beneath The flooding of the earthly fate, and chance Seemed pouring mightily dark and loud between us, Unspeakable news oft visited our hearts:  We knew each other by desire; yea, spake Out of the strength of darkness flowing o’er us, Across the hindering outcry of the world
One to another sweet desirable things. 
Until at last we took such heavenly lust
Of those unheard messages into our lives,
We were made abler than the worldly fate. 
We held its random enmity as frost
The storming Northern seas, and fastened it
In likeness of our love’s imagining;
Or as a captain with his courage holds
The mutinous blood of an army aghast with fear,
And maketh it unwillingly dare his purpose,
Our lust of love struck its commandment deep Into the froward turbulence of world That parted us.  Suddenly the dark noise Cleft and went backward from us, and we stood Knowing each other in a quiet light; And like wise music made of many strings Following and adoring underneath Prevailing song, fate lived beneath our love, Under the masterful excellent silence of it, A multitudinous obedience.

She. 
Yea, but not this my marvel:  not that we
Should master with desire the sundering world,
We who bore in our hearts such destiny,
There was no force knew to be dangerous
Against it, but must turn its malice clean
Into obsequious favour worshipping us. 
Rather hath this astonisht me, that we
Have not for ever lived in this high hour. 
Only to be twin elements of joy
In this extravagance of Being, Love,
Were our divided natures shaped in twain;
And to this hour the whole world must consent. 
Is it not very marvellous, our lives
Can only come to this out of a long
Strange sundering, with the years of the world between us?

He.  Shall life do more than God? for hath not God Striven with himself, when into known delight His unaccomplisht joy he would put forth,—­ This mystery of a world sign of his striving?  Else wherefore this, a thing to break the mind With labouring in the wonder of it, that here Being—­the world and we—­is suffered to be!—­ But, lying on thy breast one notable day, Sudden exceeding agony of love Made my mind a trance of infinite knowledge. 
I was not:  yet I saw the will of God
As light unfashion’d, unendurable flame,
Interminable, not to be supposed;
And there was no more creature except light,—­
The dreadful burning of the lonely God’s
Unutter’d joy.  And then, past telling, came
Shuddering and division in the light: 
Therein, like trembling, was desire to know
Its own perfect beauty; and it became
A cloven fire, a double flaming, each
Adorable to each; against itself
Waging a burning love, which was the world;—­