I had a father! yes, but long ago— How long it seemed that moment. Oh, how far, How far and safe, God, dost thou keep thy saints When once gone from us! We may call against The lighted windows of thy fair June-heaven Where all the souls are happy,—and not one, Not even my father, look from work or play To ask, ‘Who is it that cries after us, Below there, in the dusk?’ Yet formerly He turned his face upon me quick enough, If I said ‘father.’ Now I might cry loud; The little lark reached higher with his song Than I with crying. Oh, alone, alone,— Not troubling any in heaven, nor any on earth, I stood there in the garden, and looked up The deaf blue sky that brings the roses out On such June mornings. You who keep account Of crisis and transition in this life, Set down the first time Nature says plain ‘no’ To some ‘yes’ in you, and walks over you In gorgeous sweeps of scorn. We all begin By singing with the birds, and running fast With June-days, hand in hand: but once, for all, The birds must sing against us, and the sun Strike down upon us like a friend’s sword caught By an enemy to slay us, while we read The dear name on the blade which bites at us!— That’s bitter and convincing: after that, We seldom doubt that something in the large Smooth order of creation, though no more Than haply a man’s footstep, has gone wrong. Some tears fell down my cheeks, and then I smiled, As those smile who have no face in the world To smile back to them. I had lost a friend In Romney Leigh; the thing was sure—a friend, Who had looked at me most gently now and then, And spoken of my favourite books ... ‘our books’ ... With such a voice! Well, voice and look were now More utterly shut out from me, I felt, Than even my father’s. Romney now was turned To a benefactor, to a generous man, Who had tied himself to marry ... me, instead Of such a woman, with low timorous lids He lifted with a sudden word one day, And left, perhaps, for my sake.—Ah, self-tied By a contract,—male Iphigenia, bound At a fatal Aulis, for the winds to change, (But loose him—they’ll not change); he well might seem A little cold and dominant in love! He had a right to be dogmatical, This poor, good Romney. Love, to him, was made A simple law-clause. If I married him, I would not dare to call my soul my own, Which so he had bought and paid for: every thought And every heart-beat down there in the bill,— Not one found honestly deductible From any use that pleased him! He might cut My body into coins to give away Among his other paupers; change my sons, While I stood dumb as Griseld, for black babes Or piteous foundlings; might unquestioned set My right hand teaching in the Ragged Schools,