Sonnets from the Portuguese

Have heard this word thou hast said - Himself, beside

Thee speaking and me listening! and replied

One of us - that was God! - and laid the curse

So darkly on my eyelids as to amerce

My sight from seeing thee - that if I had died,

The deathweights placed there, would have signified

Less absolute exclusion. "Nay" is worse

From God than from all others, O my friend!

Men could not part us with their worldly jars,

Nor the seas change us, nor the tempests bend:

Our hands would touch for all the mountainbars -

And, heaven being rolled between us at the end,

We should but vow the faster for the stars.