strength
  Upon the waters, pushed me back again
  On these deserted sands of barren life. 
  Tho’ from the deep vault, where the heart of hope
  Fell into dust, and crumbled in the dark—­
  Forgetting who to render beautiful
  Her countenance with quick and healthful blood—­
  Thou didst not sway me upward, could I perish
  With such a costly casket in the grasp
  Of memory?  He, that saith it, hath o’erstepp’d
  The slippery footing of his narrow wit,
  And fall’n away from judgment.  Thou art light,
  To which my spirit leaneth all her flowers,
  And length of days, and immortality
  Of thought, and freshness ever self-renew’d. 
  For Time and Grief abode too long with Life,
  And like all other friends i’ the world, at last
  They grew aweary of her fellowship: 
  So Time and Grief did beckon unto Death,
  And Death drew nigh and beat the doors of Life;
  But thou didst sit alone in the inner house,
  A wakeful port’ress and didst parle with Death,
  ‘This is a charmed dwelling which I hold’;
  So Death gave back, and would no further come. 
  Yet is my life nor in the present time,
  Nor in the present place.  To me alone,
  Pushed from his chair of regal heritage,
  The Present is the vassal of the Past: 
  So that, in that I have lived, do I live,
  And cannot die, and am, in having been,
  A portion of the pleasant yesterday,
  Thrust forward on to-day and out of place;
  A body journeying onward, sick with toil,
  The lithe limbs bow’d as with a heavy weight
  And all the senses weaken’d in all save that
  Which, long ago, they had glean’d and garner’d up
  Into the granaries of memory—­
  The clear brow, bulwark of the precious brain,
  Now seam’d and chink’d with years—­and all the while
  The light soul twines and mingles with the growths
  Of vigorous early days, attracted, won,
  Married, made one with, molten into all
  The beautiful in Past of act or place. 
  Even as the all-enduring camel, driven
  Far from the diamond fountain by the palms,
  Toils onward thro’ the middle moonlight nights,
  Shadow’d and crimson’d with the drifting dust,
  Or when the white heats of the blinding noons
  Beat from the concave sand; yet in him keeps
  A draught of that sweet fountain that he loves,
  To stay his feet from falling, and his spirit
  From bitterness of death.

                            Ye ask me, friends,
  When I began to love.  How should I tell ye? 
  Or from the after fulness of my heart,
  Flow back again unto my slender spring
  And first of love, tho’ every turn and depth
  Between is clearer in my life than all
  Its present flow.  Ye know not what ye ask. 
  How should the broad and open flower tell
  What sort of bud it was, when press’d together
  In its green sheath, close lapt in silken