The faint insistent world voice murmuring on
Its pivot in another atmosphere;
All else is silence, the pervading year
Blows wanly through my senses and is gone.

O You who met me on the sunny lawn
Of yesteryear, to be my true companion,
And bade me lead you with me from the dawn
Into the shades of my predestined canon,
How is it that I find myself alone
Here in this desolate and starry zone?


XIV

A while you shared my path and solitude,
A while you ate the bread of loneliness,
And satisfied yourself with a caress
Or with a careless overflow of mood.
And then you left me suddenly, to press
Into the world again, and seek your food
Among the mortals whom you understood,
Instead of learning in the wilderness.

Now you return to where you fled from me,
And find me gone. You call me from afar,
And call in vain; I can not turn to see
You loveliness, beloved as you are.
Inexorably I move from sphere to sphere,
Nor wait for any soul, however dear.