There is no shade or fold of mystery
Swathing the other.

Many, many years,
For they seem many and my most of life,
And well I could have linger'd in that porch,
So unproportioned to the dwelling place,
In the maydews of childhood, opposite
The flush and dawn of youth, we lived together,
Apart, alone together on those hills.
Before he saw my day my father died,
And he was happy that he saw it not:
But I and the first daisy on his grave
From the same clay came into light at once.
As Love and I do number equal years
So she, my love, is of an age with me.
How like each other was the birth of each!
The sister of my mother--she that bore
Camilla close beneath her beating heart,
Which to the imprisoned spirit of the child,
With its true touched pulses in the flow
And hourly visitation of the blood,
Sent notes of preparation manifold,
And mellow'd echoes of the outer world--
My mother's sister, mother of my love,
Who had a twofold claim upon my heart,
One twofold mightier than the other was,
In giving so much beauty to the world,
And so much wealth as God had charged her with,
Loathing to put it from herself for ever,