The sun his kingdom fills with light, but all
  Save where it strikes some planet and her moons
Across cold chartless gulfs ordained to fall,
  Void antres, reckoneth no man’s nights or noons,
But feeling forth as for some outmost shore,
Faints in the blank of doom, and is no more.

God scattereth His abundance as forgot,
  And what then doth he gather?  If we know,
’Tis that One told us it was life.  ’For not
  A sparrow,’ quoth he, uttering long ago
The strangest words that e’er took earthly sound,
  ‘Without your Father falleth to the ground.’

PERDITA.

I go beyond the commandment.’  So be it.  Then mine be the blame, The loss, the lack, the yearning, till life’s last sand be run,—­ I go beyond the commandment, yet honour stands fast with her claim, And what I have rued I shall rue; for what I have done—­I have done.

Hush, hush! for what of the future; you cannot the base exalt,
There is no bridging a chasm over, that yawns with so sheer incline;
I will not any sweet daughter’s cheek should pale for this mother’s fault,
Nor son take leave to lower his life a-thinking on mine.

‘_ Will I tell you all?_’ So! this, e’en this, will I do for your great
      love’s sake;
Think what it costs. ’Then let there be silence—­silence you’ll count
      consent.’
No, and no, and for ever no:  rather to cross and to break,
And to lower your passion I speak—­that other it was I meant.

That other I meant (but I know not how) to speak of, nor April days,
Nor a man’s sweet voice that pleaded—­O (but I promised this)—­
He never talked of marriage, never; I grant him that praise;
And he bent his stately head, and I lost, and he won with a kiss.

He led me away—­O, how poignant sweet the nightingale’s note that noon—­
I beheld, and each crisped spire of grass to him for my sake was fair,
And warm winds flattered my soul blowing straight from the soul of June,
And a lovely lie was spread on the fields, but the blue was bare.

When I looked up, he said:  ’Love, fair love!  O rather look in these eyes
With thine far sweeter than eyes of Eve when she stepped the valley
      unshod’—­
For ONE might be looking through it, he thought, and he would not in any
      wise
I should mark it open, limitless, empty, bare ’neath the gaze of God.

Ah me!  I was happy—­yes, I was; ’t is fit you should know it all,
While love was warm and tender and yearning, the rough winds troubled
      me not;
I heard them moan without in the forest; heard the chill rains fall—­
But I thought my place was sheltered with him—­I forgot, I forgot.

After came news of a wife; I think he was glad I should know. 
To stay my pleading, ‘take me to church and give me my ring’;
‘You should have spoken before,’ he had sighed, when I prayed him so,
For his heart was sick for himself and me, and this bitter thing.