Is it not very strange that you and I,
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That once had never heard the other's name,
Knowing not either lived beneath the sky,
At last mysteriously to each other came,
Suddenly close and near that were so far,
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Two grown to one as stalk and flower are?
I was on earth before you, knew the spring
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While you still slept in heaven, the white bloom
Of April, and all things that bud and sing—
As though the world were making fair a room
For you to step in from your cradling sphere,
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Nor find it too unlovely to be here.
When your white feet first touched our earthly shore,
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Surely some shock of sweetness trembled through
The leafy world, as morn the message bore
Over the glittering gardens, singing—You;
Yet heard I not—and the long years sped by,
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But of your lovely face no news had I.
O idle years that kept us thus apart,
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Walking, as in a maze, so late to find,
That else had been one history, heart to heart;
Yet not in vain perchance those years behind—
For thus slow Time, 'gainst Love's impatience wise,
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Prepared our souls to meet each other's eyes.
Beloved apparition, ghostly fair,
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Divinely new, and yet for ever known,
So strangely come to me out of the air—
How wondrously familiar hath Love grown
Since that far day; yet ever stranger too
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The marvel of this magic life with you.
Strange to know such a flower for very friend,
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With the young moon, day in, day out, to dwell,
A shining comrade to the journey's end:
End where it will, with her it must be well;
And, as she touches each small common thing
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Of life—Ah! how it learns to bloom and sing.
Whether the road we tread be dust or dew,
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Menaced with storm, or lit with pearl and rose,
'Tis a good road together, and we two
Follow it, singing—whither the road goes
Content to know not, so, where'er it wends,
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We fare it always thus—immortal friends.