| |
| BENEATH a knap where flown | |
| Nestlings play, | |
| Within walls of weathered stone, | |
| Far away | |
| From the files of formal houses, | 5 |
| 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 | 10 |
| “Here is she!” | |
| Seems written everywhere | |
| Unto me. | |
| But to friends and nodding neighbors, | |
| Fellow wights in lot and labors, | 15 |
| Who descry the times as I, | |
| No such lucid legend tells | |
| Where she dwells. | |
| |
| Should I lapse to what I was | |
| In days by— | 20 |
| (Such cannot be, but because | |
| Some loves die | |
| Let me feign it)—none would notice | |
| That where she I know by rote is | |
| Spread a strange and withering change, | 25 |
| Like a drying of the wells | |
| Where she dwells. | |
| |
| To feel I might have kissed— | |
| Loved as true— | |
| Otherwhere, nor Mine have missed | 30 |
| 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 | 35 |
| Where she dwells. | |
| |
| And Devotion droops her glance | |
| To recall | |
| What bond-servants of Chance | |
| We are all. | 40 |
| 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. | 45 |
| |
