But only three in all God's universe <br />Have heard this word thou hast said,--Himself, beside <br />Thee speaking, and me listening ! and replied <br />One of us . . . that was God, . . . and laid the curse <br />So darkly on my eyelids, as to amerce <br />My sight from seeing thee,--that if I had died, <br />The deathweights, placed there, would have signified <br />Less absolute exclusion. 'Nay' is worse <br />From God than from all others, O my friend ! <br />Men could not part us with their worldly jars, <br />Nor the seas change us, nor the tempests bend; <br />Our hands would touch for all the mountain-bars: <br />And, heaven being rolled between us at the end, <br />We should but vow the faster for the stars.<br /><br />Elizabeth Barrett Browning<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/ii/
