I answered her with flattering accents meet—­
  “Love, they are whitest lilies e’er were blown.” 
“And sayest thou so?” she sighed in murmurs sweet;
  “I have nought else to give thee now, mine own! 
For it is night.  Then take them, love!” said she: 
“They have been costly flowers to thee—­and me.”

While thus she said I took them from her hand,
  And, overcome with love and nearness, woke;
And overcome with ruth that she should stand
  Barefooted in the grass; that, when she spoke,
Her mystic words should take so sweet a tone,
And of all names her lips should choose “My own”

I rose, I journeyed, neared my home, and soon
  Beheld the spire peer out above the hill. 
It was a sunny harvest afternoon. 
  When by the churchyard wicket, standing still,
I cast my eager eyes abroad to know
If change had touched the scenes of long ago.

I looked across the hollow; sunbeams shone
  Upon the old house with the gable ends: 
“Save that the laurel trees are taller grown,
  No change,” methought, “to its gray wall extends
What clear bright beams on yonder lattice shine! 
There did I sometime talk with Eglantine.”

There standing with my very goal in sight,
  Over my haste did sudden quiet steal;
I thought to dally with my own delight,
  Nor rush on headlong to my garnered weal,
But taste the sweetness of a short delay,
And for a little moment hold the bliss at bay.

The church was open; it perchance might be
  That there to offer thanks I might essay,
Or rather, as I think, that I might see
  The place where Eglantine was wont to pray. 
But so it was; I crossed that portal wide,
And felt my riot joy to calm subside.

The low depending curtains, gently swayed,
  Cast over arch and roof a crimson glow;
But, ne’ertheless, all silence and all shade
  It seemed, save only for the rippling flow
Of their long foldings, when the sunset air
Sighed through the casements of the house of prayer.

I found her place, the ancient oaken stall,
     Where in her childhood I had seen her sit,
Most saint-like and most tranquil there of all,
     Folding her hands, as if a dreaming fit—­
A heavenly vision had before her strayed
Of the Eternal Child in lowly manger laid.

I saw her prayer-book laid upon the seat,
     And took it in my hand, and felt more near
in fancy to her, finding it most sweet
     To think how very oft, low kneeling there,
In her devout thoughts she had let me share,
And set my graceless name in her pure prayer.

My eyes were dazzled with delightful tears—­
     In sooth they were the last I ever shed;
For with them fell the cherished dreams of years. 
     I looked, and on the wall above my head,
Over her seat, there was a tablet placed,
With one word only on the marble traced.—­