Hyperion to Bellarmin
Was she not mine, you sisters of fate, was she not mine? The pure springs I call to witness and the innocent trees that overheard us, and
the daylight and the aether! was she not mine? not one with me in all the chords of life?
Where is the being that knew her like mine? in what mirror were gathered the rays of that light as in me? was she not joyfully startled at her own glory when first she became aware of herself in my joy? Oh! where is the heart that, like mine, was everywhere close to her, that, like mine, filled her and was filled by her, that was there solely to embrace hers, as the eyelid is there for the eye.
We were but a single flower, and our souls lived in one another like the flower when it loves and conceals its tender joys in its closed chalice.
And yet, and yet was she not torn from me like a crown usurped, and laid into the dust?