Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

POSSESSION by JOHN FREEMAN

First Line: I SAW YOU, / I HELD YOU
Last Line: OR COME YOU NOW NEARER THAN ANY MAN LIVING MAY BE?
Subject(s): PROPERTY; POSSESSIONS;
I SAW you,
I held you,
And surely I heard you:
But you were as far as any man living could be.

Though sometimes
I have seen you,
And touched you and heard you,
As together we walked and your sleeve now and then brushed mine;

Yet were you then
Farther, farther
Than with body's absence—
But who walks with you now while your thoughts are here and brush mine?

The slow waters
Of three oceans,
And the change of seasons,
Between us are but as a new-leafy hawthorn hedge,

And I see you
And hold you:—
But are you yet living,
Or come you now nearer than any man living may be?



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