Elizabeth Barrett Browning - A Denial lyrics

We have met late it is too late to meet
 O friend, not more than friend!
Death’s forecome shroud is tangled
Round my feet
And if I step or stir, I touch the end
 In this last jeopardy
Can I approach thee, I, who cannot move?
How shall I answer thy request for love?
 Look in my face and see

I love thee not, I dare not love thee! go
 In silence drop my hand
If thou seek roses, seek them where they blow
In garden-alleys, not in desert-sand
 Can life and death agree
That thou shouldst stoop thy
Song to my complaint?
I cannot love thee if the word is faint
 Look in my face and see

I might have loved thee in some former days
 Oh, then, my spirit's had leapt
As now they sink, at hearing thy love-praise!
Before these faded cheeks were overwept
 Had this been asked of me
To love thee with my whole
Strong heart and head
I should have said still yes
But smiled and said
 "Look in my face and see!"

But now god sees me, God, who took my heart
 And drowned it in life’s surge
In all your wide warm earth I have no part
A light song overcomes me like a dirge
 Could Love’s great harmony
The saints keep step to when
Their bonds are loose
Not weigh me down? am I a wife to choose?
 Look in my face and see

While I behold, as plain as one who dreams
 Some woman of full worth
Whose voice, as cadenced as
A silver stream’s
Shall prove the fountain-soul which
Sends it forth
 One younger, more thought-free
And fair and gay, than I, thou must forget
With brighter eyes than these
Which are not wet
 Look in my face and see!

So farewell thou, whom I have known too late
 To let thee come so near
Be counted happy while men call thee great
And one belovèd woman feels thee dear!
 Not I! that cannot be
I am lost, I am changed, I must go farther
Where the change shall take me worse
And no one dare  Look in my face and see

Meantime I bless thee by
These thoughts of mine
 I bless thee from all such!
I bless thy lamp to oil, thy cup to wine
Thy hearth to joy, thy hand to an equal touch
 Of loyal troth for me
I love thee not, I love thee not! away!
Here’s no more courage in my soul to say
 "Look in my face and see"