The Day Of The Two Daffodils

'The daffodils are fine this year,' I said; 'O yes, but see my crocuses,' said she. And so we entered in and sat at talk Within a little parlour bowered about With garden-noises, filled with garden scent, As some sweet sea-shell rings with pearly chimes And sighs out fragrance of its mother's breast. We sat at talk, and all the afternoon Whispered about in changing silences Of flush and sudden light and gathering shade, As though some Maestro drew out organ stops Somewhere in heaven. As two within a boat On the wide sea we sat at talk, the hours Lapping unheeded round us as the waves. And as such two will ofttimes pause in speech, Gaze at high heaven and draw deep to their hearts The infinite azure, then meet eyes again And flash it to each other; without words First, and then with voice trembling as trumpets Tremble with fierce breath, voice cadenced too As deep as the deep sea, Aeolian voice, Voice of star-spaces, and the pine-wood's voice In dewy mornings, Life's own awful voice: So did We talk, gazing with God's own eyes Into Life's deeps-ah, how they throbbed with stars! And were we not ourselves like pulsing suns Who, once an aeon met within the void, So fiery close, forget how far away Each orbit sweeps, and dream a little space Of fiery wedding. So our hearts made answering Lightnings all that afternoon through purple mists Of riddled speech; and when at last the sun, Our sentinel, made sign beneath the trees Of coming night, and we arose and passed Across the threshold to the flowers again, We knew a presence walking in the grove, And a voice speaking through the evening's cool Unknown before: though Love had wrought no wrong, His rune was spoken, and another rhyme Writ in his poem by the master Life. 'Pray, pluck me some,' I said. She brought me two, For daffodils were very fine that year,- O very fine, but daffodils no more.