Walter Murdoch (1874–1970). The Oxford Book of Australasian Verse. 1918.

117. Blindness

OUR true hearts are forever lonely:

A wistfulness is in our thought:

Our lights are like the dawns which only

Seem bright to us and yet are not.

Something you see in me I wis not:

Another heart in you I guess:

A stranger’s lips—but thine I kiss not,

Erring in all my tenderness.

I sometimes think a mighty lover

Takes every burning kiss we give:

His lights are those which round us hover:

For him alone our lives we live.

Ah, sigh for us whose hearts unseeing

Point all their passionate love in vain,

And blinded in the joy of being,

Meet only when pain touches pain.