’How am I changed! my hopes were once like fire: 
I loved, and I believed that life was love. 765
How am I lost! on wings of swift desire
Among Heaven’s winds my spirit once did move. 
I slept, and silver dreams did aye inspire
My liquid sleep:  I woke, and did approve
All nature to my heart, and thought to make 770
A paradise of earth for one sweet sake.

’I love, but I believe in love no more. 
I feel desire, but hope not.  O, from sleep
Most vainly must my weary brain implore
Its long lost flattery now:  I wake to weep, 775
And sit through the long day gnawing the core
Of my bitter heart, and, like a miser, keep,
Since none in what I feel take pain or pleasure,
To my own soul its self-consuming treasure.’

He dwelt beside me near the sea; 780
And oft in evening did we meet,
When the waves, beneath the starlight, flee
O’er the yellow sands with silver feet,
And talked:  our talk was sad and sweet,
Till slowly from his mien there passed 785
The desolation which it spoke;
And smiles,—­as when the lightning’s blast
Has parched some heaven-delighting oak,
The next spring shows leaves pale and rare,
But like flowers delicate and fair, 790
On its rent boughs,—­again arrayed
His countenance in tender light: 
His words grew subtile fire, which made
The air his hearers breathed delight: 
His motions, like the winds, were free, 795
Which bend the bright grass gracefully,
Then fade away in circlets faint: 
And winged Hope, on which upborne
His soul seemed hovering in his eyes,
Like some bright spirit newly born 800
Floating amid the sunny skies,
Sprang forth from his rent heart anew. 
Yet o’er his talk, and looks, and mien,
Tempering their loveliness too keen,
Past woe its shadow backward threw, 805
Till like an exhalation, spread
From flowers half drunk with evening dew,
They did become infectious:  sweet
And subtle mists of sense and thought: 
Which wrapped us soon, when we might meet, 810
Almost from our own looks and aught
The wild world holds.  And so, his mind
Was healed, while mine grew sick with fear: 
For ever now his health declined,
Like some frail bark which cannot bear 815
The impulse of an altered wind,
Though prosperous:  and my heart grew full
’Mid its new joy of a new care: 
For his cheek became, not pale, but fair,
As rose-o’ershadowed lilies are; 820
And soon his deep and sunny hair,
In this alone less beautiful,