Water, water, earth and water,
Earth and air and earth and fire
And heaven’s blue
And bowers’ green
And golden Heaven’s bar:
These things I know,
These things I’ve seen in life or in a dream
And figured forth in painting and in rhyme
And time
And time
And Time’s resolved to tear them from me....
Through all I’ve known,
These women — Beauteous stunners, lost to me
Those stunners, but reflections, only shadows
Beauteous shadows,
Beauteous shadows,
Dreamt or kissed, beloved shadows
One I have loved: and she I married:
Dead and buried, dead and buried
One I have loved, she wed to another:
A vision, a myst’ry, a wife and a mother
Living, she left me....
In beauty I have placed all my trust, all my troth
Those two were as portals, I painted them both
As the third, whom I’ve loved all my days as a dreamer:
Centuries gone, my namesake’s redeemer....
One thing once learnt remains to me:
The woodspurge has a cup of three
And so these three I always see
Now and nightly
Now and nightly