Explore "The Veil of Maya" by Edith Nesbit on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
SWEET, I have loved before. I know / This longing that invades my days; / This shape that haunts life's busy ways / I know since long and long ago.
This starry mystery of delight / That floats across my eager eyes, / This pain that makes earth Paradise, / These magic songs of day and night --
I know them for the things they are: / A passing pain, a longing fleet, / A shape that soon I shall not meet, / A fading dream of veil and star.
Yet, even as my lips proclaim / The wisdom that the years have lent, / Your absence is joy's banishment, / And life's one music is your name.
I love you to my heart's hid core: / Those other loves? how should one learn / From marshlights how the great fires burn? / Ah, no! I never loved before!