And so, through forced work and spontaneous work, The inner life informed the outer life, Reduced the irregular blood to settled rhythms, Made cool the forehead with fresh-sprinkling dreams, And, rounding to the spheric soul the thin Pined body, struck a colour up the cheeks, Though somewhat faint. I clenched my brows across My blue eyes greatening in the looking-glass, And said, ‘We’ll live, Aurora! we’ll be strong. The dogs are on us—but we will not die.’ Whoever lives true life, will love true love. I learnt to love that England. Very oft, Before the day was born, or otherwise Through secret windings of the afternoons, I threw my hunters off and plunged myself Among the deep hills, as a hunted stag Will take the waters, shivering with the fear And passion of the course. And when, at last Escaped,—so many a green slope built on slope Betwixt me and the enemy’s house behind, I dared to rest, or wander,—like a rest Made sweeter for the step upon the grass,— And view the ground’s most gentle dimplement, (As if God’s finger touched but did not press In making England!) such an up and down Of verdure,—nothing too much up or down, A ripple of land; such little hills, the sky Can stoop to tenderly and the wheatfields climb; Such nooks of valleys, lined with orchises, Fed full of noises by invisible streams; And open pastures, where you scarcely tell White daisies from white dew,—at intervals The mythic oaks and elm-trees standing out Self-poised upon their prodigy of shade,— I thought my father’s land was worthy too Of being my Shakspeare’s. Very oft alone, Unlicensed; not unfrequently with leave To walk the third with Romney and his friend The rising painter, Vincent Carrington, Whom men judge hardly, as bee-bonnetted, Because he holds that, paint a body well, You paint a soul by implication, like The grand first Master. Pleasant walks! for if He said ... ‘When I was last in Italy’ ... It sounded as an instrument that’s played Too far off for the tune—and yet it’s fine To listen. Ofter we walked only two, If cousin Romney pleased to walk with me. We read, or talked, or quarrelled, as it chanced: We were not lovers, nor even friends well-matched— Say rather, scholars upon different tracks, And thinkers disagreed; he, overfull Of what is, and I, haply, overbold For what might be. But then the thrushes sang, And shook my pulses and the elms’ new leaves,— And then I turned, and held my finger up, And bade him mark that, howsoe’er the world Went ill, as he related, certainly The thrushes still sang in it.—At which word His brow would soften,—and he bore with me In melancholy patience, not unkind, While, breaking into voluble ecstacy,