How should she dream of ill? the heart filled quite With sunshine, like the shepherd's-clock at noon, Closes its leaves around its warm delight; Whate'er in life is harsh or out of tune Is all shut out, no boding shade of light Can pierce the opiate ether of its swoon: Love is but blind as thoughtful justice is, But naught can be so wanton-blind as bliss. XXXIII. All beauty and all life he was to her; She questioned not his love, she only knew That she loved him, and not a pulse could stir In her whole frame but quivered through and through With this glad thought, and was a minister To do him fealty and service true, Like golden ripples hasting to the land To wreck their freight of sunshine on the strand. XXXIV. O dewy dawn of love! O hopes that are Hung high, like the cliff-swallow's perilous nest, Most like to fall when fullest, and that jar With every heavier billow! O unrest Than balmiest deeps of quiet sweeter far! How did ye triumph now in Margaret's breast, Making it readier to shrink and start Than quivering gold of the pond-lily's heart. XXXV. Here let us pause: O, would the soul might ever Achieve its immortality in youth, When nothing yet hath damped its high endeavor After the starry energy of truth! Here let us pause, and for a moment sever This gleam of sunshine from the days unruth That sometime come to all, for it is good To lengthen to the last a sunny mood. PART SECOND. I. As one who, from the sunshine and the green, Enters the solid darkness of a cave, Nor knows what precipice or pit unseen May yawn before him with its sudden grave, And, with hushed breath, doth often forward lean, Dreaming he hears the plashing of a wave Dimly below, or feels a damper air From out some dreary chasm, he knows not where;-- II. So, from the sunshine and the green of love, We enter on our story's darker part; And, though the horror of it well may move An impulse of repugnance in the heart, Yet let us think, that, as there's naught above The all-embracing atmosphere of Art, So also there is naught that falls below Her generous reach, though grimed with guilt and woe. III. Her fittest triumph is to show that good Lurks in the heart of evil evermore, That love, though scorned, and outcast, and withstood, Can without end forgive, and yet have store; God's love and man's are of the self-same blood, And He can see that always at the door Of foulest hearts the angel-nature yet Knocks to return and cancel all its debt. IV.