The fields between Are dewy-fresh, browsed by deep-udder’d kine, And all about the large lime feathers low, The lime a summer home of murmurous wings.[2] In that still place she, hoarded in herself, Grew, seldom seen: not less among us lived Her fame from lip to lip. Who had not heard Of Rose, the Gardener’s daughter? Where was he, So blunt in memory, so old at heart, At such a distance from his youth in grief, That, having seen, forgot? The common mouth, So gross to express delight, in praise of her Grew oratory. Such a lord is Love, And Beauty such a mistress of the world. And if I said that Fancy, led by Love, Would play with flying forms and images, Yet this is also true, that, long before I look’d upon her, when I heard her name My heart was like a prophet to my heart, And told me I should love. A crowd of hopes, That sought to sow themselves like winged seeds, Born out of everything I heard and saw, Flutter’d about my senses and my soul; And vague desires, like fitful blasts of balm To one that travels quickly, made the air Of Life delicious, and all kinds of thought, That verged upon them sweeter than the dream Dream’d by a happy man, when the dark East, Unseen, is brightening to his bridal morn. And sure this orbit of the memory folds For ever in itself the day we went To see her. All the land in flowery squares, Beneath a broad and equal-blowing wind, Smelt of the coming summer, as one large cloud[3] Drew downward: but all else of heaven was pure Up to the Sun, and May from verge to verge, And May with me from head to heel. And now, As tho’ ’twere yesterday, as tho’ it were The hour just flown, that morn with all its sound (For those old Mays had thrice the life of these), Rings in mine ears. The steer forgot to graze, And, where the hedge-row cuts the pathway, stood, Leaning his horns into the neighbour field, And lowing to his fellows. From the woods Came voices of the well-contented doves. The lark could scarce get out his notes for joy, But shook his song together as he near’d His happy home, the ground. To left and right, The cuckoo told his name to all the hills; The mellow ouzel fluted in the elm; The redcap[4] whistled;[5] and the nightingale Sang loud, as tho’ he were the bird of day. And Eustace turn’d, and smiling said to me, “Hear how the bushes echo! by my life, These birds have joyful thoughts. Think you they sing Like poets, from the vanity of song? Or have they any sense of why they sing? And would they praise the heavens for what they have?” And I made answer, “Were there nothing else For which to praise the heavens but only love, That only love were cause enough for praise”. Lightly he laugh’d, as one that read my thought, And on we went; but ere an hour had pass’d, We reach’d a meadow slanting to the North; Down which a well-worn pathway courted us To one green wicket in a privet hedge; This, yielding, gave into a grassy walk Thro’ crowded lilac-ambush trimly pruned;