XX. While I-to the shape, I too Nor a whit abate, And relax not a gesture due, As I see my belief come true. XXI. For, there have I drawn or no Life to that lip? Do my fingers dip In a flame which again they throw XXII. Ha! was the hair so first? What, unfilleted, Made alive, and spread Through the void with a rich outburst, Chestnut gold-interspersed ? XXIII. Like the doors of a casket-shrine, See, on either side, Her two arms divide Till the heart betwixt makes sign, "Take me, for I am thine!" XXIV. "Now-now"-the door is heard! Hark, the stairs! and near- "Now!" and, at call the third, She enters without a word. XXV. On doth she march and on It is, past escape, Herself, now: the dream is done And the shadow and she are one. XXVI. First, I will pray. Do Thou Yet wilt grant control To another, nor disallow For a time, restrain me now! XXVII. I admonish me while I may, At my hand its price one day! BY THE FIRESIDE. I. How well I know what I mean to do When the long dark autumn evenings come; And where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue? With the music of all thy voices, dumb In life's November too! II. I shall be found by the fire, suppose, O'er a great wise book, as beseemeth age; While the shutters flap as the cross-wind blows, And I turn the page, and I turn the page, Not verse now, only prose! III. Till the young ones. whisper, finger on lip, “There he is at it, deep in Greek: "Now then, or never, out we slip "To cut from the hazels by the creek "A mainmast for our ship!" IV. 1 I shall be at it indeed, my friends! And I pass out where it ends. V. The out-side frame, like your hazel-trees But the inside-archway widens fast, And a rarer sort succeeds to these, And we slope to Italy at last And youth, by green degrees. VI. I follow wherever I am led, Knowing so well the leader's hand: Oh woman-country, wooed not wed, Loved all the more by earth's male-lands, Laid to their hearts instead ! VII. Look at the ruined chapel again VIII. A turn, and we stand in the heart of things; The woods are round us, heaped and dim; From slab to slab how it slips and springs, The thread of water single and slim, Through the ravage some torrent brings! IX. Does it feed the little lake below? That speck of white just on its marge Is Pella; see, in the evening-glow, How sharp the silver spear-heads charge When Alp meets heaven in snow! X. On our other side is the straight-up rock; The marks on a moth, and small ferns fit XI. Oh the sense of the yellow mountain-flowers, XII. That crimson the creeper's leaf across XIII. By the rose-flesh mushrooms, undivulged Where a freaked fawn-coloured flaky crew XIV. And yonder, at foot of the fronting ridge |