An unspoken echo

Here is a verse rewritten in strict iambic pentameter (ten syllables per line, following an unstressed/stressed da-DUM rhythm, along with ABAB rhyme scheme.

I did not know her worth within my world,

Yet still I feel how close our lives entwined.

When she was near, her strength was safely furled;

Her quiet ways kept all my thoughts aligned.

I lived a simple life and never knew

How deep within my heart she came to dwell.

A sacred vow inside my soul she grew,

Through sleeping spring-times when the shadows fell.

Until at last, she was the world to me,

A sudden song that made the silence break;

Her melody became a symphony,

A harp that caused my sleeping mind to wake.

Yet not a word of love did I devise,

To say, “Turn now, and look into my eyes.”

The very day she turned her gaze to mine,

A sudden scent of flowers filled the air.

The spring returned, so rich and so divine;

A dreamy vision woke up everywhere.

Then I was forced to travel far away;

The dream was shattered in a single breath.

Alone I stood within the fading day,

Without a ticket, with a mind like death.

A groan of grief inside my chest was spun,

Beside the gates, beneath the midday sun.

A gentle hand upon my shirt was laid;

I wear it still, the blessing that she made.

For six and thirty years, through pain and tears,

No passage of the long and suffering cast,

No idle hour, no place that disappears,

Has dimmed the truth or buried down the past.