V

Low warm winds had gently breathed us away from the land—

Ten long sweet summer days upon deck, sitting hand in hand—

When he clothed a naked mind with the wisdom and wealth of his own,

And I bow'd myself down as a slave to his intellectual throne,

When he coin'd into English gold some treasure of classical song,

When he flouted a statesman's error, or flamed at a public wrong,

When he rose as it were on the wings of an eagle beyond me, and past

Over the range and the change of the world from the first to the last,

When he spoke of his tropical home in the canes by the purple tide,

And the high star-crowns of his palms on the deep-wooded mountain-side,

And cliffs all robed in lianas that dropt to the brink of his bay,

And trees like the towers of a minster, the sons of a winterless day.

'Paradise there!' so he said, but I seem'd in Paradise then

With the first great love I had felt for the first and greatest of men,

Ten long days of summer and sin—if it must be so—

But days of a larger light than I ever again shall know—

Days that will glimmer, I fear, thro' life to my latest breath;

'No frost there,' so he said, 'as in truest Love no Death.'