NOW when I am near to you, dear friend, Passing out of myself, being delivered— Through those eyes and lips and hands, so loved, so ardently loved, I am become free; In the sound of your voice I dwell As in a world defended from evil. What I am accounted by the world to be—all that I leave behind: It is nothing to me any longer. Like one who leaves a house with all its mouldy old furniture and pitches his camp under heaven's blue, So I take up my abode in your presence— I find my deliverance in you. |