and all
  The careful burthen of our tender years
  Trembled upon the other.  He that gave
  Her life, to me delightedly fulfill’d
  All loving-kindnesses, all offices
  Of watchful care and trembling tenderness. 
  He worked for both:  he pray’d for both:  he slept
  Dreaming of both; nor was his love the less
  Because it was divided, and shot forth
  Boughs on each side, laden with wholesome shade,
  Wherein we rested sleeping or awake,
  And sung aloud the matin-song of life.

  She was my foster-sister:  on one arm
  The flaxen ringlets of our infancies
  Wander’d, the while we rested:  one soft lap
  Pillow’d us both:  one common light of eyes
  Was on us as we lay:  our baby lips,
  Kissing one bosom, ever drew from thence
  The stream of life, one stream, one life, one blood,
  One sustenance, which, still as thought grew large,
  Still larger moulding all the house of thought,
  Perchance assimilated all our tastes
  And future fancies.  ’Tis a beautiful
  And pleasant meditation, what whate’er
  Our general mother meant for me alone,
  Our mutual mother dealt to both of us: 
  So what was earliest mine in earliest life,
  I shared with her in whom myself remains. 
  As was our childhood, so our infancy,
  They tell me, was a very miracle
  Of fellow-feeling and communion. 
  They tell me that we would not be alone,—­
  We cried when we were parted; when I wept,
  Her smile lit up the rainbow on my tears,
  Stay’d on the clouds of sorrow; that we loved
  The sound of one another’s voices more
  Than the grey cuckoo loves his name, and learn’d
  To lisp in tune together; that we slept
  In the same cradle always, face to face,
  Heart beating time to heart, lip pressing lip,
  Folding each other, breathing on each other,
  Dreaming together (dreaming of each other
  They should have added) till the morning light
  Sloped thro’ the pines, upon the dewy pane
  Falling, unseal’d our eyelids, and we woke
  To gaze upon each other.  If this be true,
  At thought of which my whole soul languishes
  And faints, and hath no pulse, no breath, as tho’
  A man in some still garden should infuse
  Rich attar in the bosom of the rose,
  Till, drunk with its own wine and overfull
  Of sweetness, and in smelling of itself,
  It fall on its own thorns—­if this be true—­
  And that way my wish leaneth evermore
  Still to believe it—­’tis so sweet a thought,
  Why in the utter stillness of the soul
  Doth question’d memory answer not, nor tell,
  Of this our earliest, our closest drawn,
  Most loveliest, most delicious union? 
  Oh, happy, happy outset of my days! 
  Green springtide, April promise, glad new year
  Of Being, which with earliest violets,
  And lavish carol of clear-throated larks,
  Fill’d all the march of life.—­I