"Two little blackbirds sat upon a stone;

One flew away, and then there was one;

The other flew after and then there was none;

So the poor stone was left all alone."

One of these little birds back again flew;

The other came after, and then there were two;

Says one to the other, pray, how do you do?

Very well, thank you, and, pray, how are you?

A stone is the barest fact:

But living and wonderful things

Gather to earthly occasion and act

With folded or parting wings.

Birds of the air are they,—

Our knowledge, our thought, our love,—

And the ethers in which they win their way

Are breaths of the heaven above.

Some place and point of the hour,—

The same little fact for two,—

Who knoweth the lasting wonder and power

It holdeth for me and you;

Away in the long-past years,

With trifle of merest chance,

Keeping, through losing, and blinding, and

tears,

The key of its circumstance?

I, left to the narrowed earth,—

You into the great heaven gone,—

And things of our sharing,—our work, our

mirth,—

So lonely to brood upon!

Yet ever, when thought recurs,

With hardly a reckoning why,

To some old, small memory, straightway stirs

That sound of wings in the sky;

And like birds to a resting-place,—

No longer one, but the two,—

Alight the remembrances, face to face,

Alive between me and you;

And heaven grows real and dear,

And earth widens up to heaven;

And all that had vanished, and stayed so

near,

In one marvellous glimpse is given.

For memory is return:

Ourselves are what we have been:

And what we have been together, we learn

Our life doth continue in.

Spread, then, the angel wings!

I lose you not as you go;

Since heart finds heart in the uttermost

things

Two thoughts may revisit so!