Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922.

A Farewell

‘A. E.’ (George William Russell) (1867–1935)

ONLY in my deep heart I love you, sweetest heart,

Many another vesture hath the soul, I pray

Call me not forth from this. If from the light I part

Only with clay I cling unto the clay.

And ah! my bright companion, you and I must go

Our ways, unfolding lonely glories, not our own,

Not from each other gather’d; but an inward glow

Breathed by the Lone One to the seeker lone.

If for the heart’s own sake we break the heart, we may,

When the last ruby drop dissolves in diamond light,

Meet in a deeper vesture in another day;

Until that dawn, dear heart, good-night, good-night!