I flattered all the beauteous country round, As poets use ... the skies, the clouds, the fields, The happy violets hiding from the roads The primroses run down to, carrying gold,— The tangled hedgerows, where the cows push out Impatient horns and tolerant churning mouths ’Twixt dripping ash-boughs,—hedgerows all alive With birds and gnats and large white butterflies Which look as if the May-flower had caught life And palpitated forth upon the wind,— Hills, vales, woods, netted in a silver mist, Farms, granges, doubled up among the hills, And cattle grazing in the watered vales, And cottage-chimneys smoking from the woods, And cottage-gardens smelling everywhere, Confused with smell of orchards. ‘See,’ I said, ‘And see! is God not with us on the earth? And shall we put Him down by aught we do? Who says there’s nothing for the poor and vile Save poverty and wickedness? behold!’ And ankle-deep in English grass I leaped, And clapped my hands, and called all very fair. In the beginning when God called all good, Even then, was evil near us, it is writ. But we, indeed, who call things good and fair, The evil is upon us while we speak; Deliver us from evil, let us pray. SECOND BOOK. TIMES followed one another. Came a morn I stood upon the brink of twenty years, And looked before and after, as I stood Woman and artist,—either incomplete, Both credulous of completion. There I held The whole creation in my little cup, And smiled with thirsty lips before I drank, ‘Good health to you and me, sweet neighbour mine, And all these peoples.’ I was glad, that day; The June was in me, with its multitudes Of nightingales all singing in the dark, And rosebuds reddening where the calyx split. I felt so young, so strong, so sure of God! So glad, I could not choose be very wise! And, old at twenty, was inclined to pull My childhood backward in a childish jest To see the face of’t once more, and farewell! In which fantastic mood I bounded forth At early morning,—would not wait so long As even to snatch my bonnet by the strings, But, brushing a green trail across the lawn With my gown in the dew, took will and way Among the acacias of the shrubberies, To fly my fancies in the open air And keep my birthday, till my aunt awoke To stop good dreams. Meanwhile I murmured on, As honeyed bees keep humming to themselves; ‘The worthiest poets have remained uncrowned Till death has bleached their foreheads to the bone, And so with me it must be, unless I prove Unworthy of the grand adversity,— And certainly I would not fail so much. What, therefore, if I crown myself to-day In sport, not pride, to learn the feel of it, Before my brows be numb as Dante’s own