I am: before me all the years are dead,
And all the fiery locks of sunrise woven
Into the gold and scarlet of my head:
In me all skies and seas are shaken and cloven:
All life and light and love about me shed
Begotten in me, in my moving moven,
Are as my tears: all worlds that ever swam
As dew of kisses on my lips: I am.
But thou, chief lover, in whose golden heart
The melody and music lifts its pzean,
Whose lyre fulfilled of me, fathered of Art
And that Sun’s song beyond the Empyréan,
Who art myself, not any more apart,
Having called my children by the call Pandean,
Mellowed with Delphian gold, the Ephesian quiver,
To float down Time for ever and for ever ;—
I am thy lyre and thou mine harper: thou
My music, I thy spirit: thou the lover
And I the bride: the glory of my brow
Deeper delight, new ardour, to discover
Stoops in thine heart ; my love and light endow
Thy life with fervour as I bend me over
The starry curve and surface of the sea,
And kiss thy very life out into me.
O central fountain of my yearning veins!
O mountain single-soaring, thou art blended
Into my heaven : prescient of the pains
That shall bring forth—what worlds? my heart is rended!
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