Page:The poems of George Eliot (Crowell, 1884).djvu/432

 His years with others must the sweeter be

For those brief days he spent in loving me.

X.

His sorrow was my sorrow, and his joy

Sent little leaps and laughs through all my frame;

My doll seemed lifeless and no girlish toy

Had any reason when my brother came.

I knelt with him at marbles, marked his fling

Cut the ringed stem and make the apple drop,

Or watched him winding close the spiral string

That looped the orbits of the humming top.

Grasped by such fellowship my vagrant thought

Ceased with dream-fruit dream-wishes to fulfil;

My aëry-picturing fantasy was taught

Subjection to the harder, truer skill

That seeks with deeds to grave a thought-tracked line.

And by "What is," "What will be" to define.

XI.

School parted us; we never found again

That childish world where our two spirits mingled

Like scents from varying roses that remain

One sweetness, nor can evermore be singled.

Yet the twin habit of that early time

Lingered for long about the heart and tongue:

We had been natives of one happy clime,

And its dear accent to our utterance clung.