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[First published 1852. Reprinted 1855.]
LIGHT flows our war of mocking words, and yet, | |
| Behold, with tears my eyes are wet. | |
| I feel a nameless sadness o’er me roll. | |
| Yes, yes, we know that we can jest, | |
| We know, we know that we can smile; | 5 |
| But there’s a something in this breast | |
| To which thy light words bring no rest, | |
| And thy gay smiles no anodyne. | |
| Give me thy hand, and hush awhile, | |
| And turn those limpid eyes on mine, | 10 |
| And let me read there, love, thy inmost soul. | |
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| Alas, is even Love too weak | |
| To unlock the heart, and let it speak? | |
| Are even lovers powerless to reveal | |
| To one another what indeed they feel? | 15 |
| I knew the mass of men conceal’d | |
| Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal’d | |
| They would by other men be met | |
| With blank indifference, or with blame reprov’d: | |
| I knew they liv’d and mov’d | 20 |
| Trick’d in disguises, alien to the rest | |
| Of men, and alien to themselves—and yet | |
| The same heart beats 1 in every human breast. | |
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| But we, my love—does a like spell benumb | |
| Our hearts—our voices?—must we too be dumb? | 25 |
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| Ah, well for us, if even we, | |
| Even for a moment, can get free | |
| Our heart, and have our lips unchain’d: | |
| For that which seals them hath been deep ordain’d. | |
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| Fate, which foresaw | 30 |
| How frivolous a baby man would be, | |
| By what distractions he would be possess’d, | |
| How he would pour himself in every strife, | |
| And well-nigh change his own identity; | |
| That it might keep from his capricious play | 35 |
| His genuine self, and force him to obey, | |
| Even in his own despite, his being’s law, | |
| Bade through the deep recesses of our breast | |
| The unregarded River of our Life | |
| Pursue with indiscernible flow its way; | 40 |
| And that we should not see | |
| The buried stream, and seem to be | |
| Eddying about in blind uncertainty, | |
| Though driving on with it eternally. | |
| But often, in the world’s most crowded streets, | 45 |
| But often, in the din of strife, | |
| There rises an unspeakable desire | |
| After the knowledge of our buried life, | |
| A thirst to spend our fire and restless force | |
| In tracking out our true, original course; | 50 |
| A longing to inquire | |
| Into the mystery of this heart that beats | |
| So wild, so deep in us, to know | |
| Whence our thoughts come and where they go. | |
| And many a man in his own breast then delves, | 55 |
| But deep enough, alas, none ever mines: | |
| And we have been on many thousand lines, | |
| And we have shown on each talent and power, | |
| But hardly have we, for one little hour, | |
| Been on our own line, have we been ourselves; | 60 |
| Hardly had skill to utter one of all | |
| The nameless feelings that course through our breast, | |
| But they course on for ever unexpress’d. | |
| And long we try in vain to speak and act | |
| Our hidden self, and what we say and do | 65 |
| Is eloquent, is well—but ’tis not true: | |
| And then we will no more be rack’d | |
| With inward striving, and demand | |
| Of all the thousand nothings of the hour | |
| Their stupefying power; | 70 |
| Ah yes, and they benumb us at our call: | |
| Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn, | |
| From the soul’s subterranean depth upborne | |
| As from an infinitely distant land, | |
| Come airs, and floating echoes, and convey | 75 |
| A melancholy into all our day. | |
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| Only—but this is rare— | |
| When a beloved hand is laid in ours, | |
| When, jaded with the rush and glare | |
| Of the interminable hours, | 80 |
| Our eyes can in another’s eyes read clear, | |
| When our world-deafen’d ear | |
| Is by the tones of a lov’d voice caress’d,— | |
| A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast | |
| And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again: | 85 |
| The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain, | |
| And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know. | |
| A man becomes aware of his life’s flow, | |
| And hears its winding murmur, and he sees | |
| The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze. | 90 |
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| And there arrives a lull in the hot race | |
| Wherein he doth for ever chase | |
| That flying and elusive shadow, Rest. | |
| An air of coolness plays upon his face, | |
| And an unwonted calm pervades his breast. | 95 |
| And then he thinks he knows | |
| The Hills where his life rose, | |
| And the Sea where it goes. | |
