Never can we have things the way we wish in this world—­a beautiful day, a beautiful place, and the presence of the beloved all at the same time.  Something is always missing; if the place be beautiful, the weather perhaps is bad.  Or if the weather and the place both happen to be perfect, the woman is absent.  So the poet finding himself in some very beautiful place, and remembering this, remembers also the last time that he met the woman beloved.  It was a small dark house and chilly; outside there was rain and storm; and the sounds of the wind and of the rain were as the sounds of people secretly listening, or sounds of people trying to look in secretly through the windows.  Evidently it was necessary that the meeting should be secret, and it was not altogether as happy as could have been wished.

The third example is a very beautiful poem; we must content ourselves with an extract from it.  It is the memory of a betrothal day, and the poet is Frederick Tennyson.  I suppose you know that there were three Tennysons, and although Alfred happened to be the greatest, all of them were good poets.

  It is a golden morning of the spring,
    My cheek is pale, and hers is warm with bloom,
    And we are left in that old carven room,
  And she begins to sing;

  The open casement quivers in the breeze,
    And one large musk-rose leans its dewy grace
    Into the chamber, like a happy face,
  And round it swim the bees;

* * * * *

  I know not what I said—­what she replied
    Lives, like eternal sunshine, in my heart;
    And then I murmured, Oh! we never part,
  My love, my life, my bride!

* * * * *

  And silence o’er us, after that great bliss,
    Fell like a welcome shadow—­and I heard
    The far woods sighing, and a summer bird
  Singing amid the trees;

  The sweet bird’s happy song, that streamed around,
    The murmur of the woods, the azure skies,
    Were graven on my heart, though ears and eyes
  Marked neither sight nor sound.

  She sleeps in peace beneath the chancel stone,
    But ah! so clearly is the vision seen,
    The dead seem raised, or Death has never been,
  Were I not here alone.

This is great art in its power of picturing a memory of the heart.  Let us notice some of the beauties.  The lover is pale because he is afraid, anxious; he is going to ask a question and he does not know how she may answer him.  All this was long ago, years and years ago, but the strong emotions of that morning leave their every detail painted in remembrance, with strange vividness After all those years the man still recollects the appearance of the room, the sunshine entering and the crimson rose looking into the room from the garden, with bees humming round it.  Then after the question had been asked and happily answered,