One for a deep cup and an empty wall, or sky

Edwin Arlington Robinson

from The Night Before

...When or where I first met the woman

I cherished and made my wife, no matter.

Enough to say that I found her and kept her

Here in my heart with as pure a devotion

As ever Christ felt for his brothers. Forgive me

For naming His name in your patient presence;

But I feel my words, and the truth I utter

Is God's own truth. I loved that woman, --

Not for her face, but for something fairer,

Something diviner, I thought, than beauty:

I loved the spirit -- the human something

That seemed to chime with my own condition,

And make soul-music when we were together;

And we were never apart, from the moment

My eyes flashed into her eyes the message

That swept itself in a quivering answer

Back through my strange lost being. My pulses

Leapt with an aching speed; and the measure

Of this great world grew small and smaller,

Till it seemed the sky and the land and the ocean

Closed at last in a mist all golden

Around us two. And we stood for a season

Like gods outflung from chaos, dreaming

That we were the king and the queen of the fire

That reddened the clouds of love that held us

Blind to the new world soon to be ours --

Ours to seize and sway. The passion

Of that great love was a nameless passion,

Bright as the blaze of the sun at noonday,

Wild as the flames of hell; but, mark you,

Never a whit less pure for its fervor.

The baseness in me (for I was human)

Burned like a worm, and perished; and nothing

Was left me then but a soul that mingled

Itself with hers, and swayed and shuddered

In fearful triumph...