The burden did repeat,
And still began again because
You were more sweet.

And then I went down to the sea,
And heard it murmuring too,
Part of an ancient mystery,
All made of me and you:
How many a thousand years ago
I loved, and you were sweet--
Longer I could not stay, and so
I fled back to your feet.

The last stanza especially expresses the idea that I have been telling you
about; but in a poem entitled "Greater Memory" the idea is much more fully
expressed. By "greater memory" you must understand the memory beyond this
life into past stages of existence. This piece has become a part of the
nineteenth century poetry that will live; and a few of the best stanzas
deserve to be quoted,

In the heart there lay buried for years
Love's story of passion and tears;
Of the heaven that two had begun
And the horror that tore them apart;
When one was love's slayer, but one
Made a grave for the love in his heart.

The long years pass'd weary and lone
And it lay there and changed there unknown;
Then one day from its innermost place,