“’To sing among the poets—­we are nought: 
  We cannot drop a line into that sea
And read its fathoms off, nor gauge a thought,
    Nor map a simile.

“’It may be of all voices sublunar
  The only one he echoes we did try;
We may have come upon the only star
    That twinkles in his sky,’

“And so it was with me.” 
                         O false my friend! 
  False, false, a random charge, a blame undue;
Wrest not fair reasoning to a crooked end: 
    False, false, as you are true!

But I read on:  “And so it was with me;
  Your golden constellations lying apart
They neither hailed nor greeted heartily,
    Nor noted on their chart.

“And yet to you and not to me belong
  Those finer instincts that, like second sight
And hearing, catch creation’s undersong,
      And see by inner light.

“You are a well, whereon I, gazing, see
  Reflections of the upper heavens—­a well
From whence come deep, deep echoes up to me—­
      Some underwave’s low swell.

“I cannot soar into the heights you show,
  Nor dive among the deeps that you reveal;
But it is much that high things are to know,
      That deep things are to feel.

“’Tis yours, not mine, to pluck out of your breast
  Some human truth, whose workings recondite
Were unattired in words, and manifest
      And hold it forth to light

“And cry, ‘Behold this thing that I have found,’
  And though they knew not of it till that day,
Nor should have done with no man to expound
      Its meaning, yet they say,

“’We do accept it:  lower than the shoals
  We skim, this diver went, nor did create,
But find it for us deeper in our souls
      Than we can penetrate.’

“You were to me the world’s interpreter,
  The man that taught me Nature’s unknown tongue,
And to the notes of her wild dulcimer
      First set sweet words, and sung.

“And what am I to you?  A steady hand
  To hold, a steadfast heart to trust withal;
Merely a man that loves you, and will stand
      By you, whatever befall.

“But need we praise his tendance tutelar
  Who feeds a flame that warms him?  Yet ’tis true
I love you for the sake of what you are,
      And not of what you do:—­

“As heaven’s high twins, whereof in Tyrian blue
  The one revolveth:  through his course immense
Might love his fellow of the damask hue,
      For like, and difference.

“For different pathways evermore decreed
  To intersect, but not to interfere;
For common goal, two aspects, and one speed,
      One centre and one year;

“For deep affinities, for drawings strong,
  That by their nature each must needs exert;
For loved alliance, and for union long,
      That stands before desert.