“Less of that feeling which the world calls love, Thou findest in my verse, but haply more Of a more precious virtue, born of that, The love of God, of Freedom, and of Man. Thou knowest well what these three years have been, How we have filled and graced each other’s hearts, And every day grown fuller of that bliss, Which, even at first, seemed more than we could bear, And thou, meantime, unchanged, except it be That thy large heart is larger, and thine eyes Of palest blue, more tender with the love Which taught me first how good it was to love; And, if thy blessed name occur less oft, Yet thou canst see the shadow of thy soul In all my song, and art well-pleased to feel That I could ne’er be rightly true to thee, If I were recreant to higher aims. Thou didst not grant to me so rich a fief As thy full love, on any harder tenure Than that of rendering thee a single heart; And I do service for thy queenly gift Then best, when I obey my soul, and tread In reverence the path she beckons me.” It would be joy enough, he proceeds, if he could so measure joy, to rest in this contentment of loving and being loved, but life had nobler destinies, and he rejoiced that she who gave him her love had a larger conception of poetry, and so he passes to an analysis of the true aims of poesy, which finally takes the turn of considering the possibility of satisfying these aims by rendering the landscape of America into verse,-- “They tell us that our land was made for song,”-- and so continues as preserved in the present form of the poem.