And, emblem of my state, thou coming day, With all thy hours unspent to pass away! Why do I wait? What more propose to know? Where the sweet mandate bids me, let me go; My conscience in my impulse let me find, Justification in the moving mind, Law in the strong desire; or yet behind, Say, is there aught the spell that has not heard, A something that refuses to be stirred?’ ‘In other regions has my being heard Of a strange language the diviner word? Has some forgotten life the exemplar shown? Elsewhere such high communion have I known, As dooms me here, in this, to live alone? Then love, that shouldest blind me, let me, love, Nothing behold beyond thee or above; Ye impulses, that should be strong and wild, Beguile me, if I am to be beguiled!’ ‘Or are there modes of love, and different kinds, Proportioned to the sizes of our minds? There are who say thus, I held there was one, One love, one deity, one central sun; As he resistless brings the expanding day, So love should come on his victorious way. If light at all, can light indeed be there, Yet only permeate half the ambient air? Can the high noon be regnant in the sky, Yet half the land in light, and half in darkness lie? Can love, if love, be occupant in part, Hold, as it were, some chambers in the heart; Tenant at will of so much of the soul, Not lord and mighty master of the whole? There are who say, and say that it is well; Opinion all, of knowledge none can tell.’ ‘Montaigne, I know in a realm high above Places the seat of friendship over love; ’Tis not in love that we should think to find The lofty fellowship of mind with mind; Love’s not a joy where soul and soul unite, Rather a wondrous animal delight; And as in spring, for one consummate hour The world of vegetation turns to flower, The birds with liveliest plumage trim their wing, And all the woodland listens as they sing; When spring is o’er and summer days are sped, The songs are silent, and the blossoms dead: E’en so of man and woman is the bliss. O, but I will not tamely yield to this! I think it only shows us in the end, Montaigne was happy in a noble friend, Had not the fortune of a noble wife; He lived, I think, a poor ignoble life, And wrote of petty pleasures, petty pain; I do not greatly think about Montaigne.’ ‘How charming to be with her! yet indeed, After a while I find a blank succeed; After a while she little has to say, I’m silent too, although I wish to stay; What would it be all day, day after day? Ah! but I ask, I do not doubt, too much; I think of love as if it should be such As to fulfil and occupy in whole The nought-else-seeking, nought-essaying soul. Therefore it is my mind with doubts I urge; Hence are these fears and shiverings on the verge; By books, not nature, thus have we been schooled, By poetry and novels been befooled; Wiser tradition says, the affections’ claim