She was my foster-sister: on one arm The flaxen ringlets of our infancies Wander'd, the while we rested: one soft lap Pillow'd us both: one common light of eyes Was on us as we lay: our baby lips, Kissing one bosom, ever drew from thence The stream of life, one stream, one life, one blood, One sustenance, which, still as thought grew large, Still larger moulding all the house of thought, Perchance assimilated all our tastes And future fancies. 'Tis a beautiful And pleasant meditation, what whate'er Our general mother meant for me alone, Our mutual mother dealt to both of us: So what was earliest mine in earliest life, I shared with her in whom myself remains. As was our childhood, so our infancy, They tell me, was a very miracle Of fellow-feeling and communion. They tell me that we would not be alone,-- We cried when we were parted; when I wept, Her smile lit up the rainbow on my tears, Stay'd on the clouds of sorrow; that we loved The sound of one another's voices more Than the grey cuckoo loves his name, and learn'd To lisp in tune together; that we slept In the same cradle always, face to face, Heart beating time to heart, lip pressing lip, Folding each other, breathing on each other, Dreaming together (dreaming of each other They should have added) till the morning light Sloped thro' the pines, upon the dewy pane Falling, unseal'd our eyelids, and we woke To gaze upon each other. If this be true, At thought of which my whole soul languishes And faints, and hath no pulse, no breath, as tho' A man in some still garden should infuse Rich attar in the bosom of the rose, Till, drunk with its own wine and overfull Of sweetness, and in smelling of itself, It fall on its own thorns--if this be true-- And that way my wish leaneth evermore Still to believe it--'tis so sweet a thought, Why in the utter stillness of the soul Doth question'd memory answer not, nor tell, Of this our earliest, our closest drawn, Most loveliest, most delicious union? Oh, happy, happy outset of my days! Green springtide, April promise, glad new year Of Being, which with earliest violets, And lavish carol of clear-throated larks, Fill'd all the march of life.--I will not speak of thee; These have not seen thee, these can never know thee, They cannot understand me. Pass on then A term of eighteen years. Ye would but laugh If I should tell ye how I heard in thought Those rhymes, 'The Lion and the Unicorn' 'The Four-and-twenty Blackbirds' 'Banbury Cross,' 'The Gander' and 'The man of Mitylene,' And all the quaint old scraps of ancient crones, Which are as gems set in my memory, Because she learn'd them with me. Or what profits it To tell ye that her father died, just ere The daffodil was blown; or how we found The drowned seaman on the shore? These things Unto the quiet daylight of your minds Are cloud and smoke, but in the dark of mine Show traced with flame. Move with me to that hour, Which was the hinge on which the door of Hope, Once turning, open'd far into the outward, And never closed again.