Yea, stocks and stones within me bred Anxieties of joy and dread. O, bright apocalyptic sky O'erarching childhood! Far and nigh Mystery and obscuration none, Yet nowhere any moon or sun! What reason for these sighs? What hope, Daunting with its audacious scope The disconcerted heart, affects These ceremonies and respects? Why stratagems in everything? Why, why not kiss her in the ring? 'Tis nothing strange that warriors bold, Whose fierce, forecasting eyes behold The city they desire to sack, Humbly begin their proud attack By delving ditches two miles off, Aware how the fair place would scoff At hasty wooing; but, O child, Why thus approach thy playmate mild? One morning, when it flush'd my thought That, what in me such wonder wrought Was call'd, in men and women, love, And, sick with vanity thereof, I, saying loud, 'I love her,' told My secret to myself, behold A crisis in my mystery! For, suddenly, I seem'd to be Whirl'd round, and bound with showers of threads, As when the furious spider sheds Captivity upon the fly To still his buzzing till he die; Only, with me, the bonds that flew, Enfolding, thrill'd me through and through With bliss beyond aught heaven can have, And pride to dream myself her slave. A long, green slip of wilder'd land, With Knatchley Wood on either hand, Sunder'd our home from hers. This day Glad was I as I went her way. I stretch'd my arms to the sky, and sprang O'er the elastic sod, and sang 'I love her, love her!' to an air Which with the words came then and there; And even now, when I would know All was not always dull and low, I mind me awhile of the sweet strain Love taught me in that lonely lane. Such glories fade, with no more mark Than when the sunset dies to dark. They pass, the rapture and the grace Ineffable, their only trace A heart which, having felt no less Than pure and perfect happiness, Is duly dainty of delight; A patient, poignant appetite For pleasures that exceed so much The poor things which the world calls such. That, when these lure it, then you may The lion with a wisp of hay. That Charlotte, whom we scarcely knew From Anne but by her ribbons blue, Was loved, Anne less than look'd at, shows That liking still by favour goes! This Love is a Divinity, And holds his high election free Of human merit; or let's say, A child by ladies call'd to play, But careless of their becks and wiles, Till, seeing one who sits and smiles Like any else, yet only charms, He cries to come into her arms. Then, for my Cousins, fear me not! None ever loved because he ought. Fatal were else this graceful house, So full of light from ladies' brows. There's Mary; Heaven in her appears Like sunshine through the shower's bright tears; Mildred's of Earth, yet happier far Than most men's thoughts of Heaven are; But, for Honoria, Heaven and Earth Seal'd amity in her sweet birth. The noble Girl! With whom she talks She knights first with her smile; she walks, Stands, dances, to such sweet effect,