II
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ut only three in all God’s universeHave heard this word thou hast said,—Himself, besideThee speaking, and me listening! and repliedOne of us . . . that was God, . . . and laid the curseSo darkly on my eyelids, as to amerceMy sight from seeing thee,—that if I had died,The death-weights, placed there, would have signifiedLess absolute exclusion. “Nay” is worseFrom God than from all others, O my friend!Men could not part us with their worldly jars,Nor the seas change us, nor the tempests bend;Our hands would touch for all the mountain-bars:And, heaven being rolled between us at the end,We should but vow the faster for the stars.
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