Anne Charlotte Lynch (1815–1891)

AS some dark stream within a cavern’s breast

Flows murmuring, moaning for the distant sun,—

So, ere I met thee, murmuring its unrest,

Did my life’s current coldly, darkly run.

And as that stream beneath the sun’s full gaze

Its separate course and life no more maintains,

But now absorbed, transfused, far o’er the plains

It floats, etherealized in those warm rays,—

So, in the sunlight of thy fervid love,

My heart, so long to earth’s dark channels given,

Now soars, all doubt, all pain, all ill above,

And breathes the ether of the upper heaven;

So thy high spirit holds and governs mine,

So is my life, my being, lost in thine.