SHADES

SHALL I tell you, then, how it is?—

There came a cloven gleam

Like a tongue of darkened flame

To flicker in me.

And so I seem

To have you still the same

In one world with me.

In the flicker of a flower,

In a worm that is blind, yet strives,

In a mouse that pauses to listen

Glimmers our

Shadow; yet it deprives

Them none of their glisten.

In every shaken morsel

I see our shadow tremble

As if it rippled from out of us hand in hand.

As if it were part and parcel,

One shadow, and we need not dissemble

Our darkness: do you understand?

For I have told you plainly how it is.