The Explorer

I     Dearest, when I left your side,     I stood a moment, hesitating,     And plunged. The boiling tide     Of darkness took me, and down I went     Swift as a bird with folded wing,     And upward sent     The bubbles of my vital breath     That shuddered from my secret deeps     To freedom and light;     Then, dimly, on my sight     Opened the still abode of living death.     Amid the mire,     In which invisibly sightless horror creeps,     Sat, each intent on his own woe,     The host that burns with inward fire,     Crowded like monuments of memorial stone     Beneath a pitchy sky     Where even the flash of tempest dare not show,     Yet each of them alone;     And each was I. II     Breathless I struggled up,     As if the gloom had arms to clutch at me     And drag and hold,     Until the daylights gold     Shook faintly above my dizzy head     And parted suddenly, that I might see     The sky, a sheltering cup     Of hopeful azure, and your eyes of blue,     One promise and yet two     Of harbouring bliss;     And your lips parted and said,     Shall not we twain     Find joy upon joy on earth     Together and see,     In the kinship of all that has birth     From the mutual reach of desire,     A joy beyond this,     A fire at the heart of the fire?     And we clung till our spirit was free     As the flame of a kiss. III     So we soared and the earth fell away, and the region of night     Was melted in limitless day of ineffable light     Till the myriad souls of the dead were united as we,     Themselves, and yet merged in the spread of an infinite sea     The joy that is life, and around us, below and above,     The One that all lovers have found, our eternity, Love.