Yea, for the sweet love of lovers, postpone thyself even to doomsday! Pass o’er them slowly, ye hours! Be with them, ye Loves and Graces! Indirect and evasive no longer, a cowardly bather, Clinging to bough and to rock, and sidling along by the edges, In your faith, ye Muses and Graces, who love the plain present, Scorning historic abridgment and artifice anti-poetic, In your faith, ye Muses and Loves, ye Loves and Graces, I will confront the great peril, and speak with the mouth of the lovers, As they spoke by the alders, at evening, the runnel below them, Elspie, a diligent knitter, and Philip her fingers watching. VII _Vesper adest, juvenes, consurgite. Vesper Olympo_ _Expectata diu vix tandem lumina tollit._ For she confessed, as they sat in the dusk, and he saw not her blushes, Elspie confessed at the sports long ago with her father she saw him, When at the door the old man had told him the name of the bothie; Then after that at the dance; yet again at a dance in Rannoch— And she was silent, confused. Confused much rather Philip Buried his face in his hands, his face that with blood was bursting. Silent, confused, yet by pity she conquered her fear, and continued. Katie is good and not silly; be comforted, Sir, about her; Katie is good and not silly; tender, but not, like many, Carrying off, and at once, for fear of being seen, in the bosom Locking-up as in a cupboard the pleasure that any man gives them, Keeping it out of sight as a prize they need be ashamed of; That is the way, I think, Sir, in England more than in Scotland; No, she lives and takes pleasure in all, as in beautiful weather, Sorry to lose it, but just as we would be to lose fine weather. And she is strong to return to herself and feel undeserted, Oh, she is strong, and not silly: she thinks no further about you; She has had kerchiefs before from gentle, I know, as from simple. Yes, she is good and not silly; yet were you wrong, Mr. Philip, Wrong, for yourself perhaps more than for her. But Philip replied not, Raised not his eyes from the hands on his knees. And Elspie continued. That was what gave me much pain, when I met you that dance at Rannoch, Dancing myself too with you, while Katie danced with Donald; That was what gave me such pain; I thought it all a mistaking, All a mere chance, you know, and accident,—not proper choosing,— There were at least five or six—not there, no, that I don’t say, But in the country about—you might just as well have been courting That was what gave me much pain, and (you won’t remember that, though), Three days after, I met you, beside my uncle’s, walking, And I was wondering much, and hoped you wouldn’t notice, So as I passed I couldn’t help looking. You didn’t know me. But I was glad, when I heard next day you were gone to the teacher.