For bread, will taste of common grain, not grapes, Although you have a vineyard in Champagne,— Much less in Nephelococcygia, As mine was, peradventure. Having bread For just so many days, just breathing room For body and verse, I stood up straight and worked My veritable work. And as the soul Which grows within a child, makes the child grow,— Or as the fiery sap, the touch from God, Careering through a tree, dilates the bark, And roughs with scale and knob, before it strikes The summer foliage out in a green flame— So life, in deepening with me, deepened all The course I took, the work I did. Indeed, The academic law convinced of sin; The critics cried out on the falling off, Regretting the first manner. But I felt My heart’s life throbbing in my verse to show It lived, it also—certes incomplete, Disordered with all Adam in the blood, But even its very tumours, warts, and wens, Still organised by, and implying life. A lady called upon me on such a day. She had the low voice of your English dames, Unused, it seems, to need rise half a note To catch attention,—and their quiet mood, As if they lived too high above the earth For that to put them out in anything: So gentle, because verily so proud; So wary and afeared of hurting you, By no means that you are not really vile, But that they would not touch you with their foot To push you to your place; so self-possessed Yet gracious and conciliating, it takes An effort in their presence to speak truth: You know the sort of woman,—brilliant stuff, And out of nature. ‘Lady Waldemar,’ She said her name quite simply, as if it meant Not much indeed, but something,—took my hands, And smiled, as if her smile could help my case, And dropped her eyes on me, and let them melt. ‘Is this,’ she said, ‘the Muse?’ ‘No sybil even,’ I answered, ‘since she fails to guess the cause Which taxed you with this visit, madam.’ ‘Good,’ She said, ‘I like to be sincere at once; Perhaps, if I had found a literal Muse, The visit might have taxed me. As it is, You wear your blue so chiefly in your eyes, My fair Aurora, in a frank good way, It comforts me entirely for your fame, As well as for the trouble of my ascent To this Olympus.’ There, a silver laugh Ran rippling through her quickened little breaths The steep stair somewhat justified. ‘But still Your ladyship has left me curious why You dared the risk of finding the said Muse?’