Aware of one identity

Within each other, we can say:

‘I shall be everything you are.’...

We are uplifted till we touch a star.

We know that overhead

Is nothing more austere, more starry, or more deep to understand

Than is our union, human hand in hand.

.... But over our lake come strangers—a crowded launch, a lonely sailing boy.

A mile away a train bends by. In every car

Strangers are travelling, each with particular

And unkind preference like ours, with privacy

Of understanding, with especial joy

Like ours. Celia, Celia, why should there be

Distrust between ourselves and them, disunity?

.... How careful we have been

To trim this little circle that we tread,

To set a bar

To strangers and forbid them!—Are they not as we,

Our very likeness and our nearest kin?

How can we shut them out and let stars in?”

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