Of your strange doubts: they well might be: I seem A mockery to my own self. Never, Prince; You cannot love me." "Nay but thee" I said "From yearlong poring on thy pictured eyes, Ere seen I loved, and loved thee seen, and saw Thee woman thro' the crust of iron moods That mask'd thee from men's reverence up, and forced Sweet love on pranks of saucy boyhood: now, Melts mist-like into this bright hour, and this Reels, as the golden Autumn woodland reels Athwart the smoke of burning weeds. Forgive me, I waste my heart in signs: let be. My bride, My wife, my life. O we will walk this world, Yoked in all exercise of noble end, And so thro' those dark gates across the wild That no man knows. Indeed I love thee: come, Yield thyself up: my hopes and thine are one: Accomplish thou my manhood and thyself; Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me." CONCLUSION. O closed our tale, of which I give you all The random scheme as wildly as it rose : The words are mostly mine; for when we ceased There came a minute's pause, and Walter said, "I wish she had not yielded!" then to me, "What, if you drest it up poetically!" So pray'd the men, the women: I gave assent : Yet how to bind the scattered scheme of seven Together in one sheaf? What style could suit? The men required that I should give throughout The sort of mock-heroic gigantesque, With which we banter'd little Lilia first : The women-and perhaps they felt their power, For something in the ballads which they sang, Or in their silent influence as they sat, Had ever seem'd to wrestle with burlesque, Not make her true-heroic-true-sublime? Or all, they said, as earnest as the close? Which yet with such a framework scarce could be. Then rose a little feud betwixt the two, Betwixt the mockers and the realists: And I, betwixt them both, to please them both, And yet to give the story as it rose, I moved as in a strange diagonal, And maybe neither pleased myself nor them. But Lilia pleased me, for she took no part In our dispute: the sequel of the tale Had touch'd her; and she sat, she pluck'd the grass, She flung it from her, thinking: last, she fixt A showery glance upon her aunt, and said, "You-tell us what we are" who might have told, For she was cramm'd with theories out of books, But that there rose a shout: the gates were closed At sunset, and the crowd were swarming now, So I and some went out to these: we climb'd The slope to Vivian-place, and turning saw The happy valleys, half in light, and half Far-shadowing from the west, a land of peace; Gray halls alone among their massive groves; Trim hamlets; here and there a rustic tower Half-lost in belts of hop and breadths of wheat; The shimmering glimpses of a stream; the seas; A red sail, or a white; and far beyond, Imagined more than seen, the skirts of France. "Look there, a garden!" said my college friend, The Tory member's elder son "and there! God bless the narrow sea which keeps her off, |