The Victories of Love, and Other Poems

VI.  FROM JANE TO MRS. GRAHAM

Dear Mother, I can surely tell,Now, that I never shall get wellBesides the warning in my mind,All suddenly are grown so kind.Fred stopp’d the Doctor, yesterday,Downstairs, and, when he went away,Came smiling back, and sat with me,Pale, and conversing cheerfullyAbout the Spring, and how my cough,In finer weather, would leave off.I saw it all, and told him plainI felt no hope of Spring again.Then he, after a word of jest,Burst into tears upon my breast,And own’d, when he could speak, he knewThere was a little danger, too.This made me very weak and ill,And while, last night, I lay quite still,And, as he fancied, in the deep,Exhausted rest of my short sleep,I heard, or dream’d I heard him pray:‘Oh, Father, take her not away!Let not life’s dear assurance lapseInto death’s agonised “Perhaps,”A hope without Thy promise, whereLess than assurance is despair!Give me some sign, if go she must,That death’s not worse than dust to dust,Not heaven, on whose oblivious shoreJoy I may have, but her no more!The bitterest cross, it seems to me,Of all is infidelity;And so, if I may choose, I’ll missThe kind of heaven which comes to this.If doom’d, indeed, this fever ceased,To die out wholly, like a beast,Forgetting all life’s ill successIn dark and peaceful nothingness,I could but say, Thy will be done;For, dying thus, I were but oneOf seed innumerable which ne’erIn all the worlds shall bloom or bear.I’ve put life past to so poor useWell may’st Thou life to come refuse;And justice, which the spirit contents,Shall still in me all vain laments;Nay, pleased, I will, while yet I live,Think Thou my forfeit joy may’st giveTo some fresh life, else unelect,And heaven not feel my poor defect!Only let not Thy method beTo make that life, and call it me;Still less to sever mine in twain,And tell each half to live again,And count itself the whole!  To die,Is it love’s disintegrity?Answer me, “No,” and I, with grace,Will life’s brief desolation face,My ways, as native to the clime,Adjusting to the wintry time,Ev’n with a patient cheer thereof—’   He started up, hearing me cough.Oh, Mother, now my last doubt’s gone!He likes me more than Mrs. Vaughan;And death, which takes me from his side,Shows me, in very deed, his bride!

VII.  FROM JANE TO FREDERICK

I leave this, Dear, for you to read,For strength and hope, when I am dead.When Grace died, I was so perplex’d,I could not find one helpful text;And when, a little while before,I saw her sobbing on the floor,Because I told her that in heavenShe would be as the angels even,And would not want her doll, ’tis trueA horrible fear within me grew,That, since the preciousness of loveWent thus for nothing, mine might proveTo be no more, and heaven’s blissSome dreadful good which is not this.   But being about to die makes clearMany dark things.  I have no fear,Now that my love, my grief, my joyIs but a passion for a toy.I cannot speak at all, I find,The shining something in my mindThat shows so much that, if I tookMy thoughts all down, ’twould make a book.God’s Word, which lately seem’d aboveThe simpleness of human love,To my death-sharpen’d hearing tellsOf little or of nothing else;And many things I hoped were true,When first they came, like songs, from you,Now rise with witness past the reachOf doubt, and I to you can teach,As if with felt authorityAnd as things seen, what you taught me.   Yet how?  I have no words but thoseWhich every one already knows:As, ‘No man hath at any timeSeen God, but ’tis the love of HimMade perfect, and He dwells in us,If we each other love.’  Or thus,‘My goodness misseth in extentOf Thee, Lord!  In the excellentI know Thee; and the Saints on EarthMake all my love and holy mirth.’And further, ‘Inasmuch as yeDid it to one of these, to MeYe did it, though ye nothing thoughtNor knew of Me, in that ye wrought.’   What shall I dread?  Will God undoOur bond, which is all others too?And when I meet you will you sayTo my reclaiming looks, ‘Away!A dearer love my bosom warmsWith higher rights and holier charms.The children, whom thou here may’st see,Neighbours that mingle thee and me,And gaily on impartial lyresRenounce the foolish filial firesThey felt, with “Praise to God on high,Goodwill to all else equally;”The trials, duties, service, tears;The many fond, confiding yearsOf nearness sweet with thee apart;The joy of body, mind, and heart;The love that grew a reckless growth,Unmindful that the marriage-oathTo love in an eternal styleMeant—only for a little while:Sever’d are now those bonds earth-wrought;All love, not new, stands here for nought!’   Why, it seems almost wicked, Dear,Even to utter such a fear!Are we not ‘heirs,’ as man and wife,‘Together of eternal life?’Was Paradise e’er meant to fade,To make which marriage first was made?Neither beneath him nor aboveCould man in Eden find his Love;Yet with him in the garden walk’dHis God, and with Him mildly talk’d!Shall the humble preference offendIn Heaven, which God did there commend?Are ‘Honourable and undefiled’The names of aught from heaven exiled?And are we not forbid to grieveAs without hope?  Does God deceive,And call that hope which is despair,Namely, the heaven we should not share!Image and glory of the man,As he of God, is woman.  CanThis holy, sweet proportion dieInto a dull equality?Are we not one flesh, yea, so farMore than the babe and mother are,That sons are bid mothers to leaveAnd to their wives alone to cleave,‘For they two are one flesh!’  But ’tisIn the flesh we rise.  Our union is,You know ’tis said, ‘great mystery.’Great mockery, it appears to me;Poor image of the spousal bondOf Christ and Church, if loosed beyondThis life!—’Gainst which, and much more yet,There’s not a single word to set.The speech to the scoffing SadduceeIs not in point to you and me;For how could Christ have taught such clodsThat Caesar’s things are also God’s?The sort of Wife the Law could makeMight well be ‘hated’ for Love’s sake,And left, like money, land, or house;For out of Christ is no true spouse.   I used to think it strange of HimTo make love’s after-life so dim,Or only clear by inference:But God trusts much to common sense,And only tells us what, withoutHis Word, we could not have found outOn fleshly tables of the heartHe penn’d truth’s feeling counterpartIn hopes that come to all: so, Dear,Trust these, and be of happy cheer,Nor think that he who has loved wellIs of all men most miserable.   There’s much more yet I want to say,But cannot now.  You know my wayOf feeling strong from Twelve till TwoAfter my wine.  I’ll write to youDaily some words, which you shall haveTo break the silence of the grave.

VIII.  FROM JANE TO FREDERICK

You think, perhaps, ‘Ah, could she knowHow much I loved her!’  Dear, I do!And you may say, ‘Of this new aweOf heart which makes her fancies law,These watchful duties of despair,She does not dream, she cannot care!’Frederick, you see how false that is,Or how could I have written this?And, should it ever cross your mindThat, now and then, you were unkind.You never, never, were at all!Remember that!  It’s naturalFor one like Mr. Vaughan to come,From a morning’s useful pastime, home,And greet, with such a courteous zestHis handsome wife, still newly dress’d,As if the Bird of ParadiseShould daily change her plumage thrice.He’s always well, she’s always gay.Of course!  But he who toils all day,And comes home hungry, tired, or cold,And feels ’twould do him good to scoldHis wife a little, let him trustHer love, and say the things he must,Till sooth’d in mind by meat and rest.If, after that, she’s well caress’d,And told how good she is, to bearHis humour, fortune makes it fair.Women like men to be like men;That is, at least, just now and then.Thus, I have nothing to forgive,But those first years, (how could I live!)When, though I really did behaveSo stupidly, you never gaveOne unkind word or look at all:As if I was some animalYou pitied!  Now in later life,You used me like a proper Wife.   You feel, Dear, in your present mood,Your Jane, since she was kind and good,A child of God, a living soul,Was not so different, on the whole,From Her who had a little moreOf God’s best gifts: but, oh, be sure,My dear, dear Love, to take no blameBecause you could not feel the sameTowards me, living, as when dead.A hungry man must needs think breadSo sweet! and, only at their riseAnd setting, blessings, to thine eyes,Like the sun’s course, grow visible.If you are sad, remember well,Against delusions of despair,That memory sees things as they were,And not as they were misenjoy’d,And would be still, if aught destroy’dThe glory of their hopelessness:So that, in truth, you had me lessIn days when necessary zealFor my perfection made you feelMy faults the most, than now your loveForgets but where it can approve.You gain by loss, if that seem’d smallPossess’d, which, being gone, turns allSurviving good to vanity.Oh, Fred, this makes it sweet to die!   Say to yourself: ‘’Tis comfort yetI made her that which I regret;And parting might have come to passIn a worse season; as it was,Love an eternal temper took,Dipp’d, glowing, in Death’s icy brook!’Or say, ‘On her poor feeble headThis might have fallen: ’tis mine instead!And so great evil sets me freeHenceforward from calamity.And, in her little children, too,How much for her I yet can do!’And grieve not for these orphans even;For central to the love of HeavenIs each child as each star to space.This truth my dying love has graceTo trust with a so sure content,I fear I seem indifferent.   You must not think a child’s small heartCold, because it and grief soon part.Fanny will keep them all away,Lest you should hear them laugh and play.Before the funeral’s over.  ThenI hope you’ll be yourself again,And glad, with all your soul, to findHow God thus to the sharpest windSuits the shorn lambs.  Instruct them, Dear,For my sake, in His love and fear.And show now, till their journey’s done,Not to be weary they must run.   Strive not to dissipate your griefBy any lightness.  True reliefOf sorrow is by sorrow brought.And yet for sorrow’s sake, you oughtTo grieve with measure.  Do not spendSo good a power to no good end!Would you, indeed, have memory stayIn the heart, lock up and put awayRelies and likenesses and allMusings, which waste what they recall.True comfort, and the only thingTo soothe without diminishingA prized regret, is to match here,By a strict life, God’s love severe.Yet, after all, by nature’s course,Feeling must lose its edge and force.Again you’ll reach the desert tractsWhere only sin or duty acts.But, if love always lit our path,Where were the trial of our faith?   Oh, should the mournful honeymoonOf death be over strangely soon,And life-long resolutions, madeIn grievous haste, as quickly fade,Seeming the truth of grief to mock,Think, Dearest, ’tis not by the clockThat sorrow goes!  A month of tearsIs more than many, many yearsOf common time.  Shun, if you can,However, any passionate plan.Grieve with the heart; let not the headGrieve on, when grief of heart is dead:For all the powers of life defyA superstitions constancy.   The only bond I hold you toIs that which nothing can undo.A man is not a young man twice;And if, of his young years, he liesA faithful score in one wife’s breast,She need not mind who has the rest.In this do what you will, dear Love,And feel quite sure that I approve.And, should it chance as it may be,Give her my wedding-ring from me;And never dream that you can errT’wards me by being good to her;Nor let remorseful thoughts destroyIn you the kindly flowering joyAnd pleasure of the natural life.   But don’t forget your fond, dead Wife.And, Frederick, should you ever beTempted to think your love of meAll fancy, since it drew its breathSo much more sweetly after death,Remember that I never didA single thing you once forbid;All poor folks liked me; and, at the end,Your Cousin call’d me ‘Dearest Friend!’   And, new, ’twill calm your grief to know,—You, who once loved Honoria so,—There’s kindness, that’s look’d kindly on,Between her Emily and John.Thus, in your children, you will wed!And John seems so much comforted,(Like Isaac when his mother diedAnd fair Rebekah was his bride),By his new hope, for losing me!So all is happiness, you see.And that reminds me how, last night,I dreamt of heaven, with great delight.A strange, kind Lady watch’d my face,Kiss’d me, and cried, ‘His hope found grace!’She bade me then, in the crystal floor,Look at myself, myself no more;And bright within the mirror shoneHonoria’s smile, and yet my own!‘And, when you talk, I hear,’ she sigh’d,‘How much he loved her!  Many a brideIn heaven such countersemblance wearsThrough what Love deem’d rejected prayers.’She would have spoken still; but, lo,One of a glorious troop, aglowFrom some great work, towards her came,And she so laugh’d, ’twas such a flame,Aaron’s twelve jewels seem’d to mixWith the lights of the Seven Candlesticks.

IX.  FROM LADY CLITHEROE TO MRS. GRAHAM

My dearest Aunt, the Wedding-day,But for Jane’s loss, and you away,Was all a Bride from heaven could begSkies bluer than the sparrow’s egg.And clearer than the cuckoo’s call;And such a sun! the flowers allWith double ardour seem’d to blow!The very daisies were a show,Expanded with uncommon pride,Like little pictures of the Bride.   Your Great-Niece and your Grandson werePerfection of a pretty pair.How well Honoria’s girls turn out,Although they never go about!Dear me, what trouble and expenseIt took to teach mine confidence!Hers greet mankind as I’ve heard sayThat wild things do, where beasts of preyWere never known, nor any menHave met their fearless eyes till then.Their grave, inquiring trust to findAll creatures of their simple kindQuite disconcerts bold coxcombry,And makes less perfect candour shy.Ah, Mrs. Graham! people may scoff,But how your home-kept girls go off!How Hymen hastens to unbandThe waist that ne’er felt waltzer’s hand!At last I see my Sister’s right,And I’ve told Maud this very night,(But, oh, my daughters have such wills!)To knit, and only dance quadrilles.   You say Fred never writes to youFrankly, as once he used to do,About himself; and you complainHe shared with none his grief for Jane.It all comes of the foolish frightMen feel at the word, hypocrite.Although, when first in love, sometimesThey rave in letters, talk, and rhymes,When once they find, as find they must,How hard ’tis to be hourly justTo those they love, they are dumb for shame,Where we, you see, talk on the same.   Honoria, to whose heart aloneHe seems to open all his ownAt times, has tears in her kind eyes,After their private colloquies.He’s her most favour’d guest, and movesMy spleen by his impartial loves.His pleasure has some inner springDepending not on anything.Petting our Polly, none e’er smiledMore fondly on his favourite child;Yet, playing with his own, it isSomehow as if it were not his.He means to go again to sea,Now that the wedding’s over.  HeWill leave to Emily and JohnThe little ones to practise on;And Major-domo, Mrs. Rouse,A dear old soul from Wilton House,Will scold the housemaids and the cook,Till Emily has learn’d to lookA little braver than a lambSurprised by dogs without its dam!   Do, dear Aunt, use your influence,And try to teach some plain good senseTo Mary.  ’Tis not yet too lateTo make her change her chosen stateOf single silliness.  In truth,I fancy that, with fading youth,Her will now wavers.  Yesterday,Though, till the Bride was gone away,Joy shone from Mary’s loving heart,I found her afterwards apart,Hysterically sobbing.  IKnew much too well to ask her why.This marrying of Nieces dauntsThe bravest souls of maiden Aunts.Though Sisters’ children often blendSweetly the bonds of child and friend,They are but reeds to rest upon.When Emily comes back with John,Her right to go downstairs beforeAunt Mary will but be the moreObserved if kindly waived, and howShall these be as they were, when nowNiece has her John, and Aunt the senseOf her superior innocence?Somehow, all loves, however fond,Prove lieges of the nuptial bond;And she who dares at this to scoff,Finds all the rest in time drop off;While marriage, like a mushroom-ring,Spreads its sure circle every Spring.   She twice refused George Vane, you know;Yet, when be died three years agoIn the Indian war, she put on gray,And wears no colours to this day.And she it is who charges me,Dear Aunt, with ‘inconsistency!’

X.  FROM FREDERICK TO HONORIA

Cousin, my thoughts no longer tryTo cast the fashion of the sky.Imagination can extendScarcely in part to comprehendThe sweetness of our common foodAmbrosial, which ingratitudeAnd impious inadvertence waste,Studious to eat but not to taste.And who can tell what’s yet in storeThere, but that earthly things have moreOf all that makes their inmost bliss,And life’s an image still of this,But haply such a glorious oneAs is the rainbow of the sun?Sweet are your words, but, after allTheir mere reversal may befallThe partners of His glories whoDaily is crucified anew:Splendid privations, martyrdomsTo which no weak remission comesPerpetual passion for the goodOf them that feel no gratitude,Far circlings, as of planets’ fires,Round never-to-be-reach’d desires,Whatever rapturously sighsThat life is love, love sacrifice.All I am sure of heaven is this:Howe’er the mode, I shall not missOne true delight which I have known.Not on the changeful earth aloneShall loyalty remain unmovedT’wards everything I ever loved.So Heaven’s voice calls, like Rachel’s voiceTo Jacob in the field, ‘Rejoice!’Serve on some seven more sordid years,Too short for weariness or tears;Serve on; then, oh, Beloved, well-tried,Take me for ever as thy Bride!’

XI.  FROM MARY CHURCHILL TO THE DEAN

Charles does me honour, but ’twere vainTo reconsider now again,And so to doubt the clear-shown truthI sought for, and received, when youth,Being fair, and woo’d by one whose loveWas lovely, fail’d my mind to move.God bids them by their own will go,Who ask again the things they know!I grieve for my infirmity,And ignorance of how to beFaithful, at once to the heavenly life,And the fond duties of a wife.Narrow am I and want the artTo love two things with all my heart.Occupied singly in His search,Who, in the Mysteries of the Church,Returns, and calls them Clouds of Heaven,I tread a road, straight, hard, and even;But fear to wander all confused,By two-fold fealty abused.Either should I the one forget,Or scantly pay the other’s debt.   You bid me, Father, count the cost.I have; and all that must be lostI feel as only woman can.To make the heart’s wealth of some man,And through the untender world to move,Wrapt safe in his superior love,How sweet!  How sweet the household roundOf duties, and their narrow bound,So plain, that to transgress were hard,Yet full of manifest reward!The charities not marr’d, like mine,With chance of thwarting laws divine;The world’s regards and just delightIn one that’s clearly, kindly right,How sweet!  Dear Father, I endure,Not without sharp regret, be sure,To give up such glad certainty,For what, perhaps, may never be.For nothing of my state I know,But that t’ward heaven I seem to go,As one who fondly landward hiesAlong a deck that seaward flies.With every year, meantime, some graceOf earthly happiness gives placeTo humbling ills, the very charmsOf youth being counted, henceforth, harms:To blush already seems absurd;Nor know I whether I should herdWith girls or wives, or sadlier balkMaids’ merriment or matrons’ talk.   But strait’s the gate of life!  O’er late,Besides, ’twere now to change my fate:For flowers and fruit of love to form,It must he Spring as well as warm.The world’s delight my soul dejects.Revenging all my disrespectsOf old, with incapacityTo chime with even its harmless glee,Which sounds, from fields beyond my range,Like fairies’ music, thin and strange.With something like remorse, I grantThe world has beauty which I want;And if, instead of judging it,I at its Council chance to sit,Or at its gay and order’d Feast,My place seems lower than the leastThe conscience of the life to beSmiles me with inefficiency,And makes me all unfit to blessWith comfortable earthlinessThe rest-desiring brain of man.Finally, them, I fix my planTo dwell with Him that dwells apartIn the highest heaven and lowliest heart;Nor will I, to my utter loss,Look to pluck roses from the Cross.As for the good of human love,’Twere countercheck almost enoughTo think that one must die beforeThe other; and perhaps ’tis moreIn love’s last interest to doNought the least contrary thereto,Than to be blest, and be unjust,Or suffer injustice; as they must,Without a miracle, whose pactCompels to mutual life and act,Whether love shines, or darkness sleepsCold on the spirit’s changeful deeps.   Enough if, to my earthly share,Fall gleams that keep me from despair.Happy the things we here discern;More happy those for which we yearn;But measurelessly happy aboveAll else are those we guess not of!

XII.  FROM FELIX TO HONORIA

Dearest, my Love and Wife, ’tis longAgo I closed the unfinish’d songWhich never could be finish’d; norWill ever Poet utter moreOf Love than I did, watching wellTo lure to speech the unspeakable!‘Why, having won her, do I woo?’That final strain to the last height flewOf written joy, which wants the smileAnd voice that are, indeed, the whileThey last, the very things you speak,Honoria, who mak’st music weakWith ways that say, ‘Shall I not beAs kind to all as Heaven to me?’And yet, ah, twenty-fold my Bride!Rising, this twentieth festal-tide,You still soft sleeping, on this dayOf days, some words I long to say,Some words superfluously sweetOf fresh assurance, thus to greetYour waking eyes, which never growWeary of telling what I knowSo well, yet only well enoughTo wish for further news thereof.   Here, in this early autumn dawn,By windows opening on the lawn.Where sunshine seems asleep, though bright,And shadows yet are sharp with night,And, further on, the wealthy wheatBends in a golden drowse, how sweetTo sit and cast my careless looksAround my walls of well-read books,Wherein is all that stands redeem’dFrom time’s huge wreck, all men have dream’dOf truth, and all by poets knownOf feeling, and in weak sort shown,And, turning to my heart again,To find I have what makes them vain,The thanksgiving mind, which wisdom sums,And you, whereby it freshly comesAs on that morning, (can there beTwenty-two years ’twixt it and me?)When, thrill’d with hopeful love, I roseAnd came in haste to Sarum Close,Past many a homestead slumbering whiteIn lonely and pathetic light,Merely to fancy which drawn blindOf thirteen had my Love behind,And in her sacred neighbourhoodTo feel that sweet scorn of all goodBut her, which let the wise forfendWhen wisdom learns to comprehend!   Dearest, as each returning MayI see the season new and gayWith new joy and astonishment,And Nature’s infinite ostentOf lovely flowers in wood and mead.That weet not whether any heed,So see I, daily wondering, you,And worship with a passion newThe Heaven that visibly allowsIts grace to go about my house,The partial Heaven, that, though I errAnd mortal am, gave all to herWho gave herself to me.  Yet IBoldly thank Heaven, (and so defyThe beggarly soul’d humblenessWhich fears God’s bounty to confess,)That I was fashion’d with a mindSeeming for this great gift design’d,So naturally it moved aboveAll sordid contraries of love,Strengthen’d in youth with disciplineOf light, to follow the divineVision, (which ever to the darkIs such a plague as was the arkIn Ashdod, Gath, and Ekron,) stillDiscerning with the docile willWhich comes of full persuaded thought,That intimacy in love is noughtWithout pure reverence, whereas this,In tearfullest banishment, is bliss.   And so, dearest Honoria, IHave never learn’d the weary sighOf those that to their love-feasts went,Fed, and forgot the Sacrament;And not a trifle now occursBut sweet initiation stirsOf new-discover’d joy, and lendsTo feeling change that never ends;And duties which the many irk,Are made all wages and no work.   How sing of such things save to her,Love’s self, so love’s interpreter?How the supreme rewards confessWhich crown the austere voluptuousnessOf heart, that earns, in midst of wealth,The appetite of want and health,Relinquishes the pomp of lifeAnd beauty to the pleasant WifeAt home, and does all joy despiseAs out of place but in her eyes?How praise the years and gravityThat make each favour seem to beA lovelier weakness for her lord?And, ah, how find the tender wordTo tell aright of love that glowsThe fairer for the fading rose?Of frailty which can weight the armTo lean with thrice its girlish charm?Of grace which, like this autumn day,Is not the sad one of decay,Yet one whose pale brow ponderethThe far-off majesty of death?How tell the crowd, whom a passion rends,That love grows mild as it ascends?That joy’s most high and distant moodIs lost, not found in dancing blood;Albeit kind acts and smiling eyes,And all those fond realitiesWhich are love’s words, in us mean moreDelight than twenty years before?   How, Dearest, finish without wrongTo the speechless heart, the unfinish’d song,Its high, eventful passagesConsisting, say, of things like these:—   One morning, contrary to law,Which, for the most, we held in awe,Commanding either not to intrudeOn the other’s place of solitudeOr solitary mind, for fearOf coming there when God was near,And finding so what should be knownTo Him who is merciful alone,And views the working ferment baseOf waking flesh and sleeping grace,Not as we view, our kindness check’dBy likeness of our own defect,I, venturing to her room, because(Mark the excuse!) my Birthday ’twas,Saw, here across a careless chair,A ball-dress flung, as light as air,And, here, beside a silken couch,Pillows which did the pressure vouchOf pious knees, (sweet pietyOf goodness made and charity,If gay looks told the heart’s glad sense,Much rather than of penitence,)And, on the couch, an open book,And written list—I did not look,Yet just in her clear writing caught:—‘Habitual faults of life and thoughtWhich most I need deliverance from.’I turn’d aside, and saw her comeAdown the filbert-shaded way,Beautified with her usual gayHypocrisy of perfectness,Which made her heart, and mine no less,So happy!  And she cried to me,‘You lose by breaking rules, you see!Your Birthday treat is now half-goneOf seeing my new ball-dress on.’And, meeting so my lovely Wife,A passing pang, to think that lifeWas mortal, when I saw her laugh,Shaped in my mind this epitaph:‘Faults had she, child of Adam’s stem.But only Heaven knew of them.’   Or thus:      For many a dreadful day,In sea-side lodgings sick she lay,Noteless of love, nor seem’d to hearThe sea, on one side, thundering near,Nor, on the other, the loud BallHeld nightly in the public hall;Nor vex’d they my short slumbers, thoughI woke up if she breathed too low.Thus, for three months, with terrors rife,The pending of her precious lifeI watched o’er; and the danger, at last,The kind Physician said, was past.Howbeit, for seven harsh weeks the EastBreathed witheringly, and Spring’s growth ceased,And so she only did not die;Until the bright and blighting skyChanged into cloud, and the sick flowersRemember’d their perfumes, and showersOf warm, small rain refreshing flewBefore the South, and the Park grew,In three nights, thick with green.  Then sheRevived, no less than flower and tree,In the mild air, and, the fourth day,Looked supernaturally gayWith large, thanksgiving eyes, that shone,The while I tied her bonnet on,So that I led her to the glass,And bade her see how fair she was,And how love visibly could shine.Profuse of hers, desiring mine,And mindful I had loved her mostWhen beauty seem’d a vanish’d boast,She laugh’d.  I press’d her then to me,Nothing but soft humility;Nor e’er enhanced she with such charmsHer acquiescence in my arms.And, by her sweet love-weakness madeCourageous, powerful, and glad.In a clear illustration highOf heavenly affection, IPerceived that utter love is allThe same as to be rational,And that the mind and heart of love,Which think they cannot do enough,Are truly the everlasting doorsWherethrough, all unpetition’d, poursThe eternal pleasance.  Wherefore weHad innermost tranquillity,And breathed one life with such a senseOf friendship and of confidence,That, recollecting the sure word:‘If two of you are in accordOn earth, as touching any boonWhich ye shall ask, it shall be doneIn heaven,’ we ask’d that heaven’s blissMight ne’er be any less than this;And, for that hour, we seem’d to haveThe secret of the joy we gave.   How sing of such things, save to her,Love’s self, so love’s interpreter?How read from such a homely pageIn the ear of this unhomely age?’Tis now as when the Prophet cried:‘The nation hast Thou multiplied,But Thou hast not increased the joy!’And yet, ere wrath or rot destroyOf England’s state the ruin fair,Oh, might I so its charm declare,That, in new Lands, in far-off years,Delighted he should cry that hears:‘Great is the Land that somewhat bestWorks, to the wonder of the rest!We, in our day, have better doneThis thing or that than any one;And who but, still admiring, seesHow excellent for imagesWas Greece, for laws how wise was Rome;But read this Poet, and say if homeAnd private love did e’er so smileAs in that ancient English isle!’