light upon that lid,
     Full-sloping like the breasts beneath.  ’Sweet dove,
     Your sleep is pure.  Nay, pardon:  I disturb. 
     I do not? good!’ Her waking infant-stare
     Grows woman to the burden my hands bear: 
     Her own handwriting to me when no curb
     Was left on Passion’s tongue.  She trembles through;
     A woman’s tremble—­the whole instrument:-
     I show another letter lately sent. 
     The words are very like:  the name is new.

     XVI

     In our old shipwrecked days there was an hour,
     When in the firelight steadily aglow,
     Joined slackly, we beheld the red chasm grow
     Among the clicking coals.  Our library-bower
     That eve was left to us:  and hushed we sat
     As lovers to whom Time is whispering. 
     From sudden-opened doors we heard them sing: 
     The nodding elders mixed good wine with chat. 
     Well knew we that Life’s greatest treasure lay
     With us, and of it was our talk.  ’Ah, yes! 
     Love dies!’ I said:  I never thought it less. 
     She yearned to me that sentence to unsay. 
     Then when the fire domed blackening, I found
     Her cheek was salt against my kiss, and swift
     Up the sharp scale of sobs her breast did lift:-
     Now am I haunted by that taste! that sound!

     XVII

     At dinner, she is hostess, I am host. 
     Went the feast ever cheerfuller?  She keeps
     The Topic over intellectual deeps
     In buoyancy afloat.  They see no ghost. 
     With sparkling surface-eyes we ply the ball: 
     It is in truth a most contagious game: 
     Hiding the skeleton, shall be its name. 
     Such play as this the devils might appal! 
     But here’s the greater wonder; in that we,
     Enamoured of an acting nought can tire,
     Each other, like true hypocrites, admire;
     Warm-lighted looks, Love’s ephemerioe,
     Shoot gaily o’er the dishes and the wine. 
     We waken envy of our happy lot. 
     Fast, sweet, and golden, shows the marriage-knot. 
     Dear guests, you now have seen Love’s corpse-light shine.

     XVIII

     Here Jack and Tom are paired with Moll and Meg. 
     Curved open to the river-reach is seen
     A country merry-making on the green. 
     Fair space for signal shakings of the leg. 
     That little screwy fiddler from his booth,
     Whence flows one nut-brown stream, commands the joints
     Of all who caper here at various points. 
     I have known rustic revels in my youth: 
     The May-fly pleasures of a mind at ease. 
     An early goddess was a country lass: 
     A charmed Amphion-oak she tripped the grass. 
     What life was that I lived?  The life of these? 
     Heaven keep them happy!  Nature they seem near. 
     They must, I think, be wiser than I am;
     They have the secret of the bull and lamb. 
     ’Tis true that when we trace its source, ’tis beer.