I think, and say, 'To-morrow eve With kisses me will she receive;' And, thinking, for extreme delight Of love's extremes, I laugh outright. XVIII. FROM FREDERICK. Eight wedding-days gone by, and none Yet kept, to keep them all in one, Jane and myself, with John and Grace On donkeys, visited the place I first drew breath in, Knatchley Wood. Bearing the basket, stuff'd with food. Milk, loaves, hard eggs, and marmalade, I halted where the wandering glade Divides the thicket. There I knew, It seem'd, the very drops of dew Below the unalter'd eglantine. Nothing had changed since I was nine! In the green desert, down to eat We sat, our rustic grace at meat Good appetite, through that long climb Hungry two hours before the time. And there Jane took her stitching out, And John for birds'-nests pry'd about, And Grace and Baby, in between The warm blades of the breathing green, Dodged grasshoppers; and I no less, In conscientious idleness, Enjoy'd myself, under the noon Stretch'd, and the sounds and sights of June Receiving, with a drowsy charm, Through muffled ear and folded arm. And then, as if I sweetly dream'd, I half-remember'd how it seem'd When I, too, was a little child About the wild wood roving wild. Pure breezes from the far-off height Melted the blindness from my sight, Until, with rapture, grief, and awe, I saw again as then I saw. As then I saw, I saw again The harvest-waggon in the lane, With high-hung tokens of its pride Left in the elms on either side; The daisies coming out at dawn In constellations on the lawn; The glory of the daffodil; The three black windmills on the hill, Whose magic arms, flung wildly by, Sent magic shadows o'er the rye. Within the leafy coppice, lo, More wealth than miser's dreams could show, The blackbird's warm and woolly brood, Five golden beaks agape for food; The Gipsies, all the summer seen Native as poppies to the Green; The winter, with its frosts and thaws And opulence of hips and haws: The lovely marvel of the snow; The Tamar, with its altering show Of gay ships sailing up and down, Among the fields and by the Town; And, dearer far than anything, Came back the songs you used to sing. (Ah, might you sing such songs again, And I, your child, but hear as then, With conscious profit of the gulf Flown over from my present self!) And, as to men's retreating eyes, Beyond high mountains higher rise, Still farther back there shone to me The dazzling dusk of infancy. Thither I look'd, as, sick of night, The Alpine shepherd looks to the height, And does not see the day, 'tis true, But sees the rosy tops that do. Meantime Jane stitch'd, and fann'd the flies From my repose, with hush'd replies To Grace, and smiles when Baby fell. Her countenance love visible Appear'd, love audible her voice. Why in the past alone rejoice, Whilst here was wealth before me cast Which, I could feel, if 'twere but past Were then most precious? Question vain, When ask'd again and yet again, Year after year; yet now, for no