O you that facing the mirror darkly bright <br />In the shadowed corner, loiter shyly fond, <br />To ask of your own sad eyes a comfort slight, <br />Before you brave the pathless world beyond; <br /> <br />Not first to--night invades your spirit this wild <br />Despair, when loneliness stabs you! Turned, your face <br />Trembles, and soft hesitation makes you a child, <br />The child you were in some far, forgotten place, <br /> <br />Amid things for ever rejected. Dreamed you so <br />From the blankness of life to escape to a region enjoyed, <br />Glowing, and strange? Yet blank to--night, I know, <br />Spreads life, my sister; within you a deeper void. <br /> <br />In all this city, I think, so charged with pain, <br />None suffers more; desiring what you do <br />With insupportable longing, and still in vain <br />Desiring, still condemned to accept, and rue. <br /> <br />Where tarries he, Love, the adored one? In fields unknown <br />Roams he apart, or in sound of a pleasant stream <br />Sleeps? Nay, dwells he in cloudy rumour alone, <br />A name, a vision, a sweet, eluding dream? <br /> <br />He lives, he lives, my sister; yet rarely to men <br />He appears; they touch but his robe, and believe it is he. <br />But soft, with inaudible feet, he is flown, nor again <br />Comes soon; rejoicing still to be wayward and free. <br /> <br />A moment, ev'n now, he was near you: invisible wings <br />Brushed by you; and infinite longing, to follow, to find <br />That vision truth, overcomes you,--the heart's sad things <br />To tell in a trusted ear, on a bosom kind. <br /> <br />Alas! not so he is won: when the last despair <br />Encamps in the heart, at last when all seems vain, <br />Then, perchance, he will steal to you unaware, <br />And loose your tears, and understand your pain.<br /><br />Robert Laurence Binyon<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-woman-20/
