A youth and maid upon a summer night Upon the lawn, while yet the skies were light, Edmund and Emma, let their names be these, Among the shrubs within the circling trees, Joined in a game with boys and girls at play: For games perhaps too old a little they; In April she her eighteenth year begun, And twenty he, and near to twenty-one. A game it was of running and of noise; He as a boy, with other girls and boys (Her sisters and her brothers), took the fun; And when her turn, she marked not, came to run, ‘Emma,’ he called,—then knew that he was wrong, Knew that her name to him did not belong. Her look and manner proved his feeling true,— A child no more, her womanhood she knew; Half was the colour mounted on her face, Her tardy movement had an adult grace. Vexed with himself, and shamed, he felt the more A kind of joy he ne’er had felt before. Something there was that from this date began; ’Twas beautiful with her to be a man. Two years elapsed, and he who went and came, Changing in much, in this appeared the same; The feeling, if it did not greatly grow, Endured and was not wholly hid below. He now, o’ertasked at school, a serious boy, A sort of after-boyhood to enjoy Appeared—in vigour and in spirit high And manly grown, but kept the boy’s soft eye: And full of blood, and strong and lithe of limb, To him ’twas pleasure now to ride, to swim; The peaks, the glens, the torrents tempted him. Restless he seemed,—long distances would walk, And lively was, and vehement in talk. A wandering life his life had lately been, Books he had read, the world had little seen. One former frailty haunted him, a touch Of something introspective overmuch. With all his eager motions still there went A self-correcting and ascetic bent, That from the obvious good still led astray, And set him travelling on the longest way; Seen in these scattered notes their date that claim When first his feeling conscious sought a name. ‘Beside the wishing gate which so they name, ’Mid northern hills to me this fancy came, A wish I formed, my wish I thus expressed: _Would I could wish my wishes all to rest,_ _And know to wish the wish that were the best!_ O for some winnowing wind, to the empty air This chaff of easy sympathies to bear Far off, and leave me of myself aware! While thus this over health deludes me still, So willing that I know not what I will; O for some friend, or more than friend, austere, To make me know myself, and make me fear! O for some touch, too noble to be kind, To awake to life the mind within the mind!’ ‘O charms, seductions and divine delights! All through the radiant yellow summer nights Dreams, hardly dreams, that yield or e’er they’re done, To the bright fact, my day, my risen sun! O promise and fulfilment, both in one! O bliss, already bliss, which nought has shared, Whose glory no fruition has impaired,