fountain leaping toward the sun-heart to be warmer,

And recoiling in a tremble from the too much light above.

’Tis a picture for remembrance! and thus, morning after morning,

Did I follow as she drew me by the spirit to her feet,—

Why, her greyhound followed also! dogs — we both were dogs for scorning,—

To be sent back when she pleased it, and her path lay through the wheat.

And thus, morning after morning, spite of vows and spite of sorrow,

Did I follow at her drawing, while the week-days passed along;

Just to feed the swans this noontide, or to see the fawns to-morrow,

Or to teach the hill-side echo some sweet Tuscan in a song.

Ay, for sometimes on the hill-side, while we sat down in the gowans,

With the forest green behind us, and its shadow cast before;

And the river running under; and across it from the rowans

A brown partridge whirring near us, till we felt the air it bore,—

There, obedient to her praying, did I read aloud the poems

Made by Tuscan flutes, or instruments more various of our own;

Read the pastoral parts of Spenser, — or the subtle interflowings

Found in Petrarch’s sonnets, — here’s the book — the leaf is folded down!—

Or at times a modern volume, — Wordsworth’s solemn-thoughted idyl,

Howitt’s ballad-verse, or Tennyson’s enchanted revery,—

Or from Browning some “Pomegranate”, which, if cut deep down the middle,

Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity.

Or at times I read there, hoarsely, some new poem of my making,—

Poets ever fail in reading their own verses to their worth,—

For the echo in you breaks upon the words which you are speaking,

And the chariot-wheels jar in the gate through which you drive them forth.

After, when we were grown tired of books, the silence round us flinging

A slow arm of sweet compression, felt with beatings at the breast,

She would break out on a sudden, in a gush of woodland singing,

Like a child’s emotion in a god, — a naiad tired of rest.

Oh, to see or hear her singing! scarce I know which is divinest,—

For her looks sing too, — she modulates her gestures on the tune;

And her mouth stirs with the song, like song; and when the notes are finest,

’Tis the eyes that shoot out vocal light, and seem to swell them on.

Then we talked, — oh, how we talked! her voice, so cadenced in the talking,

Made another singing — of the soul! a music without bars,—

While the leafy sounds of woodlands, humming round where we were walking,

Brought interposition worthy sweet, — as skies about the stars.

And she spake such good thoughts natural, as if she always thought them,—

And had sympathies so rapid, open, free as bird on branch,

Just as ready to fly east as west, whichever way besought them,

In the birchen wood a chirrup, or a cock-crow in the grange.

In her utmost rightness there is truth, — and often she speaks lightly,

Has a grace in being gay, which even mournful souls approve,

For the root of some grave earnest thought is under-struck so rightly,

As to justify the foliage and the waving flowers above.

And she talked on, — we talked, rather! upon all things — substance — shadow—

Of the sheep that browsed the grasses, — of the reapers in the corn,—

Of the little children from the schools, seen winding through the meadow,—

Of the poor rich world beyond them, still kept poorer by its scorn.

So of men, and so of letters, — books are men of higher stature,

And the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear:

So, of mankind in the abstract, which grows slowly into nature,

Yet will lift the cry of “progress”, as it trod from sphere to sphere.

And her custom was to praise me when I said, — “The Age culls simples,

With a broad clown’s back turned broadly to the glory of the stars—

We are gods by our own reck’ning, — and may well shut up the temples,

And wield on, amid the incense-steam, the thunder of our cars.

“For we throw out acclamations of self-thanking, self-admiring,

With, at every mile run faster, — ‘O the wondrous, wondrous age!’

Little thinking if we work our SOULS as nobly as our iron,

Or if angels will commend us at the goal of pilgrimage.

“Why, what is this patient entrance into nature’s deep resources,

But the child’s most gradual learning to walk upright without bane?

When we drive out from the cloud of steam, majestical white horses,

Are we greater than the first men who led black ones by the mane?

“If we trod the deeps of ocean, if we struck the stars in rising,

If we wrapped the globe intensely with one hot electric breath,

’Twere but power within our tether, — no new spirit-power comprising,

And in life we were not greater men, nor bolder men in death”.

She was patient with my talking; and I loved her, loved her certes,

As I loved all Heavenly objects, with uplifted eyes and hands!

As I loved pure inspirations, — loved the graces, loved the virtues,

In a Love content with writing his