e, in one long sigh,
Goes with him where he goes.

* * * * *

TO LAURA.

THE MYSTERY OF REMINISCENCE. [12]

[Footnote 12: This most exquisite love-poem is founded on the Platonic
notion, that souls were united in a pre-existent state, that love is
the yearning of the spirit to reunite with the spirit with which it
formerly made one--and which it discovers on earth. The idea has
often been made subservient to poetry, but never with so earnest and
elaborate a beauty.]

Who, and what gave to me the wish to woo thee--
Still, lip to lip, to cling for aye unto thee?
Who made thy glances to my soul the link--
Who bade me burn thy very breath to drink--
My life in thine to sink?
As from the conquerors unresisted glaive,
Flies, without strife subdued, the ready slave--
So, when to life's unguarded fort, I see
Thy gaze draw near and near triumphantly--
Yields not my soul to thee?
Why from its lord doth thus my soul depart?--
Is it because its native home thou art?
Or were they brothers in the days of yore,
Twin-bound both souls, and in the links they bore
Sigh to be bound once more?
Were once our beings blent and intertwining,
And therefore still my heart for thine is pining?
Knew we the light of some extinguished sun--
The joys remote of some bright realm undone,
Where once our souls were ONE?
Yes, it _is_ so!--And thou wert bound to me
In the long-vanish'd Eld eternally!
In the dark troubled tablets which enroll
The Past--my Muse beheld this blessed scroll--
"One with thy love my soul!"
Oh yes, I learn'd in awe, when gazing there,
How once one bright inseparate life we were,

How once, one glorious essence as a God,
Unmeasured space our chainless footsteps trode--
All Nature our abode!
Round us, in waters of delight, for ever
Voluptuous flow'd the heavenly Nectar river;
We were the master of the seal of things,
And where the sunshine bathed Truth's mountain-springs
Quiver'd our glancing wings.
Weep for the godlike life we lost afar--
Weep!--thou and I its scatter'd fragments are;
And still the unconquer'd yearning we retain--
Sigh to restore the rapture and the reign,
And grow divine again.
And therefore came to me the wish to woo thee--
Still, lip to lip, to cling for aye unto thee;
_This_ made thy g