THE lover who, across a gulf Of ceremony, views his Love, And dares not yet address herself, Pays worship to her stolen glove. The gulf o’erleapt, the lover wed, It happens oft, (let truth be told), The halo leaves the sacred head, Respect grows lax, and worship cold, And all love’s May-day promising, Like song of birds before they pair, Or flush of flowers in boastful Spring, Dies out, and leaves the Summer bare. Yet should a man, it seems to me, Honour what honourable is, For some more honourable plea Than only that it is not his. The gentle wife, who decks his board And makes his day to have no night, Whose wishes wait upon her lord, Who finds her own in his delight, Is she another now than she Who, mistress of her maiden charms, At his wild prayer, incredibly Committed them to his proud arms? Unless her choice of him’s a slur Which makes her proper credit dim, He never enough can honour her Who past all speech has honour’d him. II. _Felicity_. To marry her and take her home! The poet, painting pureness, tells Of lilies; figures power by Rome; And each thing shows by something else. But through the songs of poets look, And who so lucky to have found In universal nature’s book A likeness for a life so crown’d! Here they speak best who best express Their inability to speak, And none are strong, but who confess With happy skill that they are weak. III. _Marriage Indissoluble_. ‘In heaven none marry.’ Grant the most Which may by this dark word be meant, Who shall forbid the eternal boast ‘I kiss’d, and kiss’d with her consent!’ If here, to Love, past favour is A present boast, delight, and chain, What lacks of honour, bond, and bliss, Where Now and Then are no more twain! THE EPITAPH. 1 ‘At Church, in twelve hours more, we meet! This, Dearest, is our last farewell.’ ‘Oh, Felix, do you love me?’ ‘Sweet, Why do you ask?’ ‘I cannot tell.’ 2 And was it no vain fantasy That raised me from the earth with pride? Should I to-morrow verily Be Bridegroom, and Honoria Bride? Should I, in simple fact, henceforth Live unconditionally lord Of her whose smile for brightest worth Seem’d all too bountiful reward? Incredible life’s promise seem’d, Or, credible, for life too great; Love his own deity blasphemed, And doff’d at last his heavenly state. What law, if man could mount so high, To further insolence set bars, And kept the chaste moon in the sky, And bade him not tread out the stars! 3