TO C. M. D.

If it be true, as some have dreamed,

That all have lived and loved before,

I cannot wonder it hath seemed

That on some other shore,

In former ages long ago,

Our souls had met and learned to know

The truths that now upon the sea

Establish our affinity.

Heart leaps to heart and mind to mind:

A look, a word, a smile, a phrase,—

And we at once a kinship find,

A relic of those days,

When we both watched the sunset kiss

The storied Bay of Salamis,

Or paced beside the classic stream

That borders Plato's Academe.—

Perhaps our spirits met again,

When Virgil wrote his deathless lines,

And Horace praised, in lighter vein,

His farm amid the Apennines;

Or else we walked this old, old Earth

When Grecian learning found new birth,

And arm in arm watched Giotto's tower

Rise heavenward, like a peerless flower.

Enough that we have surely met,

No matter in what land or age;

For, if such trifles we forget,

We share a common heritage:

And though in this brief life stern Fate

Shall bid us once more separate,

O brother poet, it must be

That kindred spirits such as we

Shall sail another ocean blue,

Still you with me and I with you.