"He sometimes, _in a sullen tone_, Would offer fruits, and she Always received his gifts with an air, So unreserved and free, That half-feign'd distance soon became Familiarity. "Therefore in time, when Gerald shook The woods at his employ, The young heir and the cottage-girl Would steal out to enjoy The music of each other's talk-- A simple girl and boy. "They pass'd their time, both girl and boy, Uncheck'd, unquestion'd; yet They always hid their wanderings By wood and rivulet, Because they could not give themselves A reason why they met. --It may have been in the ancient time, Before Love's earliest ban, Psychëan curiosity Had broken Nature's plan; _When all that was not youth was age, And men knew less of Man;_-- "Or when the works of time shall reach The goal to which they tend, And knowledge, being perfect, shall At last in wisdom end-- That wisdom to end knowledge--or Some change comes, yet unkenn'd; "It perhaps may be again, that men, Like orange plants, will bear, At once, the many fine effects To which God made them heir-- Large souls, large forms, and love like that Between this childish pair. "Two summers pass'd away, and then-- _Though yet young Merton's eyes, Wide with their language, spake of youth's Habitual surprise_-- He felt that pleasures such as these No longer could suffice." What the meaning of the three stanzas beginning with-- "It may have been in the ancient time," may be, we are utterly at a loss to conjecture. We seek in vain to invest them with a shadow of sense. Perhaps they are thrown in to redeem, by their profound unintelligibility, the shallow trifling of the rest of the poem. But it was not enough for young Merton that the girl accepted the fruits which he offered to her in a _sullen_ tone. He had now reached the age so naturally and lucidly described as the period of life when the "eyes, wide with their language, speak of youth's habitual surprise," and he began to seek "new joys from books," communicating the results of his studies to Maud, whose turn it now was to be surprised. "So when to-morrow came, while Maud Stood listening with surprise, He told the tale learnt over night, And, if he met her eyes, _Perhaps_ said how far the stars were, _and Talk'd on about the skies_." The effect of these lucid revelations upon the mind of Maud was very overpowering. "She wept for joy if the cushat sang Its low song in the fir; The cat, _perhaps_, broke the quiet with Its regular slow purr; 'Twas music now, and her wheel gave forth A rhythm in its whirr.