Sonnet CCXLIX: "I cannot tell thee when my heart began"

I cannot tell thee when my heart began
To love thee, Dearest; for I cannot say
That any record of my earliest day
Hands down my childhood to the ripened man.
But this I know; when wakened memory ran
A clew through action, at her sources lay
A germ of thee, at which stood hope for aye,
And in prophetic whispers shaped a plan.
So that in manhood, when I first beheld
Hope's nursling, grown to perfect womanhood,
In thee my fair ideal made flesh and blood,
It seemed not strange that by the joy impelled
Of self-evolved creation, I should brood
Above the form for which my breast had swelled.