Of your strange doubts: they well might be: I

seem

A mockery to my own self. Never, Prince;

You cannot love me."

"Nay but thee" I said

"From yearlong poring on thy pictured eyes, Ere seen I loved, and loved thee seen, and saw Thee woman thro' the crust of iron moods

That mask'd thee from men's reverence up, and

forced

Sweet love on pranks of saucy boyhood: now,
Giv'n back to life, to life indeed, thro' thee,
Indeed I love the new day comes, the light
Dearer for night, as dearer thou for faults
Lived over: lift thine eyes; my doubts are dead,
My haunting sense of hollow shows: the change,
This truthful change in thee has kill'd it. Dear,
Look up, and let thy nature strike on mine,
Like yonder morning on the blind half-world;
Approach and fear not; breathe upon my brows;
In that fine air I tremble, all the past

Melts mist-like into this bright hour, and this
Is morn to more, and all the rich to-come

Reels, as the golden Autumn woodland reels Athwart the smoke of burning weeds. Forgive me, I waste my heart in signs: let be. My bride, My wife, my life. O we will walk this world, Yoked in all exercise of noble end,

And so thro' those dark gates across the wild That no man knows. Indeed I love thee: come, Yield thyself up: my hopes and thine are one: Accomplish thou my manhood and thyself;

Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me."

CONCLUSION.

O closed our tale, of which I give you

all

The random scheme as wildly as it

rose :

The words are mostly mine; for when we ceased

There came a minute's pause, and Walter said, "I wish she had not yielded!" then to me, "What, if you drest it up poetically!"

So pray'd the men, the women: I gave assent : Yet how to bind the scattered scheme of seven Together in one sheaf? What style could suit? The men required that I should give throughout

The sort of mock-heroic gigantesque,

With which we banter'd little Lilia first :

The women-and perhaps they felt their power, For something in the ballads which they sang,

Or in their silent influence as they sat,

Had ever seem'd to wrestle with burlesque,
And drove us, last, to quite a solemn close-
They hated banter, wish'd for something real,
A gallant fight, a noble princess—why

Not make her true-heroic-true-sublime?

Or all, they said, as earnest as the close?

Which yet with such a framework scarce could be.

Then rose a little feud betwixt the two,

Betwixt the mockers and the realists:

And I, betwixt them both, to please them both,

And yet to give the story as it rose,

I moved as in a strange diagonal,

And maybe neither pleased myself nor them.

But Lilia pleased me, for she took no part

In our dispute: the sequel of the tale

Had touch'd her; and she sat, she pluck'd the

grass,

She flung it from her, thinking: last, she fixt

A showery glance upon her aunt, and said,

"You-tell us what we are" who might have

told,

For she was cramm'd with theories out of books,

But that there rose a shout: the gates were

closed

At sunset, and the crowd were swarming now,
To take their leave, about the garden rails.

So I and some went out to these: we climb'd The slope to Vivian-place, and turning saw The happy valleys, half in light, and half Far-shadowing from the west, a land of peace; Gray halls alone among their massive groves; Trim hamlets; here and there a rustic tower Half-lost in belts of hop and breadths of wheat; The shimmering glimpses of a stream; the

seas;

A red sail, or a white; and far beyond, Imagined more than seen, the skirts of France.

"Look there, a garden!" said my college friend, The Tory member's elder son "and there! God bless the narrow sea which keeps her off,