But
thou art turn’d to something strange,
And I have lost the links that bound
Thy changes; here upon the ground,
No
more partaker of thy change.
Deep
folly! yet that this could be–
That I could wing my will with might
To leap the grades of life and light,
And
flash at once, my friend, to thee.
For
tho’ my nature rarely yields
To that vague fear implied in death;
Nor shudders at the gulfs beneath,
The
howlings from forgotten fields;
Yet
oft when sundown skirts the moor
An inner trouble I behold,
A spectral doubt which makes me cold,
That
I shall be thy mate no more,
Tho’
following with an upward mind
The wonders that have come to thee,
Thro’ all the secular to-be,
But
evermore a life behind.