(E. L G.)



    Beneath a knap where flown
    Nestlings play,
    Within walls of weathered stone,
    Far away
    From the files of formal houses,
    By the bough the firstling browses,
    Lives a Sweet: no merchants meet,
    No man barters, no man sells
    Where she dwells.

    Upon that fabric fair
    "Here is she!"
    Seems written everywhere
    Unto me.
    But to friends and nodding neighbours,
    Fellow-wights in lot and labours,
    Who descry the times as I,
    No such lucid legend tells
    Where she dwells.

    Should I lapse to what I was
    Ere we met;
    (Such can not be, but because
    Some forget
    Let me feign it) none would notice
    That where she I know by rote is
    Spread a strange and withering change,
    Like a drying of the wells
    Where she dwells.

    To feel I might have kissed -
    Loved as true -
    Otherwhere, nor Mine have missed
    My life through.
    Had I never wandered near her,
    Is a smart severe severer
    In the thought that she is nought,
    Even as I, beyond the dells
    Where she dwells.

    And Devotion droops her glance
    To recall
    What bond-servants of Chance
    We are all.
    I but found her in that, going
    On my errant path unknowing,
    I did not out-skirt the spot
    That no spot on earth excels,
     Where she dwells!

    1870.

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