Sonnets From the Portuguese
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
II.
BUT only three in all God's universe
Have heard this word thou hast said; Himself, beside
Thee speaking and me listening! and replied
One of us … _that_ was God! … and laid the curse
So darkly on my eyelids as to amerce
My sight from seeing thee, --- that if I had died,
The deathweights, placed there, would have signified
Less absolute exclusion. “Nay” is worse
From 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.

