The poem
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.