“I THOUGHT, BEFORE MY SUNLIT TWENTIETH YEAR”

I thought, before my sunlit twentieth year,

That I knew Love, and Death that goes with it;

And my young broken heart in little songs,

Dew-like, I poured, and waited for my end

Wildly — and waited — being then nineteen.

I walked a little longer on my way,

Alive,‘ gainst expectation and desire,

And, being then past twenty, I beheld

The face of all the faces of the world

Dewily opening on its stem for me.

Ah! so it seemed, and, each succeeding year,

Thus hath some woman blossom of the divine

Flowered in my path, and made a frail delay

In my true journey — to my home in thee.