Hyperion to Bellarmin
Before either of us knew it we belonged to one another.
When, with all the homage of my heart, blissfully overcome, I stood before her saying nothing, and my whole life gave itself up in the beams of the eye that saw only her, embraced only her, and she gazed at me in turn, tenderly doubting, not knowing where my thoughts were taking me, and when, buried in beauty and delight, I often discreetly watched her at some charming occupation, and my soul flitted and flew about her slightest movement as the bee about the swaying twigs, and when then in peaceful thought she turned towards me and, startled by my joy, had to conceal my joy from herself, and sought and found tranquillity again in her beloved task —
When, wondrously all-knowing, she revealed to me every harmony, every discord in the depths of my being at the moment it began, before I even noticed it myself, when she saw every shadow of a cloudlet on my brow, every shadow of sadness, of pride on my lips, every spark in my eye, when she caught the ebb and flow of my heart, and caringly sensed gloomy hours approaching as my spirit too intemperately and prodigally consumed itself in tumid talk, when the dear being, more faithfully than a mirror, betrayed to me every change in my cheek, and often reproved me in loving concern at my unstable being, and chided me like a cherished child —
Oh! when once, you innocent, you counted on your fingers the steps from our mountain down to your house, when you showed me your walks, the places where you used to sit and told me how the time had passed for you there, and finally said that now you felt as if I’d always been there too —
Had we not then long since belonged to one another?