---

• Our Lombard country-girls along the coast
• Wear daggers in their garters; for they know
• That they might hate another girl to death
• Or meet a German lover. Such a knife
• I bought her, with a hilt of horn and pearl.

• Father, you cannot know of all my thoughts
• That day in going to meet her,—that last day
• For the last time, she said;—of all the love
• And all the hopeless hope that she might change
• 10And go back with me. Ah! and everywhere,
• At places we both knew along the road,
• Some fresh shape of herself as once she was
• Grew present at my side; until it seemed—
• So close they gathered round me—they would all
• Be with me when I reached the spot at last,
• To plead my cause with her against herself
• So changed. O Father, if you knew all this
• You cannot know, then you would know too, Father,
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• And only then, if God can pardon me.
• 20What can be told I'll tell, if you will hear.

• I passed a village-fair upon my road,
• And thought, being empty-handed, I would take
• Some little present, which might prove that day
• Either a pledge between us, or (God help me!)
• A parting gift. And there it was I bought
• The knife I spoke of, such as women wear.

• That day, some three hours afterwards, I found
• For certain, it must be a parting gift.
• And, standing silent now at last, I looked
• 30Into her scornful face; and heard the sea
• Still trying hard to din into my ears
• Some speech it knew which still might change her heart
• If only it could make me understand.
• One moment thus. Another, and her face
• Seemed further off than the last line of sea,
• So that I thought, if now she were to speak
• I could not hear her. Then again I knew
• All, as we stood together on the sand
• At Iglio, in the first thin shade o'the hills.

• 40 ‘Take it,’ I said, and held it out to her,
• While the hilt glanced within my trembling hold;
• ‘Take it,’ I said, ‘and keep it for my sake.’
  Added Text“Take it and keep it for my sake,” I said.
• Her neck did not unbend, nor drooped her eyes,
  Added TextHer neck unbent not, neither did her eyes
• Nor did her foot leave beating of the sand;
  Added TextMove, nor her foot left beating of the sand;
• Only she put it by from her and laughed.

• She needs must fix him there herself, because
• I gave him to her and she loved him so,
• And he should make her love me better yet,
• If women loved the more, the more they grew.
• 50But the fit place upon the wall was high
• For her, and so I held her in my arms:
• And each time that the heavy pruning-hook
• I gave her for a hammer slipped away
• As it would often, still she laughed and laughed
• And kissed and kissed me. But amid her mirth,
• Just as she hung the image on the nail,
• It slipped and all its fragments strewed the ground:
• And as it fell she screamed, for in her hand
• The dart had entered deeply and drawn blood.
• 60And so her laughter turned to tears: and ‘Oh!’
• I said, the while I bandaged the small hand,—
• ‘That I should be the first to make you bleed,
• Who love and love and love you!’—kissing still
• The fingers till I got her safe to bed.
• And still she sobbed,—‘not for the pain at all,’
• She said, ‘but for the Love, the poor good Love
• You gave me.’ So she cried herself to sleep.

• Another later thing comes back to me.
• 'Twas in those hardest foulest days of all,
• 70When still from his shut palace, sitting clean
• Above the splash of blood, old Metternich
• (May his soul die, and never-dying worms
• Feast on its pain for ever!) used to thin
• His year's doomed hundreds daintily, each month
  page: 8  
• Thirties and fifties. This time, as I think,
• Was when his thrift forbad the poor to take
• That evil brackish salt which the dry rocks
• Keep all through winter when the sea draws in.
• The first I heard of it was a chance shot
• 80 Here and there in the street, In the street here and there, and on the stones
• A stumbling clatter as of horse hemmed round.
• Then, when she saw me hurry out of doors,
• My gun slung at my shoulder and my knife
• Stuck in my girdle, she smoothed down my hair
• And laughed to see me look so brave, and leaped
• Up to my neck and kissed me. She was still
• A child; and yet that kiss was on my lips
• So hot all day where the smoke shut us in.

• For now, being always with her, the first love
• 90I had—the father's, brother's love—was changed,
• I think, in somewise; like a holy thought
• Which is a prayer before one knows of it.
• The first time I perceived this, I remember,
• Was once when after hunting I came home
• Weary, and she brought food and fruit for me,
• And sat down at my feet upon the floor
• Leaning against my side. But when I felt
• Her sweet head reach from that low seat of hers
• So high as to be laid upon my heart,
• 100I turned and looked upon my darling there
• And marked for the first time how tall she was;
• And my heart beat with so much violence
• Under her cheek, I thought she could not choose
  page: 9  
• But wonder at it soon and ask me why;
• And so I bade her rise and eat with me.
• And when, remembering all and counting back
• The time, I made out fourteen years for her
• And told her so, she gazed at me with eyes
• As of the sky and sea on a grey day,
• 110And drew her long hands through her hair, and asked me
• If she was not a woman; and then laughed:
• And as she stooped in laughing, I could see
• Beneath the growing throat the breasts half globed
• Like folded lilies deepset in the stream.

• Yes, let me think of her as then; for so
• Her image, Father, is not like the sights
• Which come when you are gone. She had a mouth
• Made to bring death to life,—the underlip
• Sucked in, as if it strove to kiss itself.
• 120Her face was ever pale, as when one stoops
• Over wan water; and the dark crisped hair
• And the hair's shadow made it paler still:—
• Deep-serried locks, the darkness of the cloud
• Where the moon's gaze is shrined set in eddying gloom.
• Her body bore her neck as the tree's stem
• Bears the top branch; and as the branch sustains
• Its pride of flower and fruit, her high neck bore
  Added Text The full year's flowering f

  Transcription Gap: at least five letters (image unclear)

  Its whole The flower of the year's pride, her proud high neck bore
• That face made wonderful with night and day.
• Her voice was swift, yet ever the last words
• 130Fell lingeringly; and rounded finger-tips
• She had, that clung a little where they touched
• And then were gone o' the instant. Her great eyes,
  page: 10  
• That sometimes turned half dizzily beneath
• The passionate lids, as faint, when she would speak,
• Had also in them hidden springs of mirth,
• Which under the dark lashes evermore
• Shook to her laugh, as when a bird flies low
• Between the water and the willow-leaves,
• And the shade quivers till he wins the light.

• 140 I was a moody comrade to her then,
• For all the love I bore her. Italy,
• The weeping desolate mother, long has claimed
• Her sons' strong arms to lean on, and their hands
• To lop the poisonous thicket from her path,
• Cleaving her way to light. And from her need
• Had grown the fashion of my whole poor life
• Which I was proud to yield her, as my father
• Had yielded his. And this had come to be
• A game to play, a love to clasp, a hate
• 150To wreak, all things together that a man
• Needs for his blood to ripen: till at times
• All else seemed shadows, and I wondered still
• To see such life pass muster and be deemed
• Time's bodily substance. In those hours, no doubt,
• To the young girl my eyes were like my soul,—
• Dark wells of death-in-life that yearned for day.
• And though she ruled me always, I remember
• That once when I was thus and she still kept
• Leaping about the place and laughing, I
• 160Did almost chide her; whereupon she knelt
• And putting her two hands into my breast

• It is that then we have her with us here,
• As when she wrung her hair out in my dream
• To-night, till all the darkness reeked of it.
• Her hair is always wet, for she has kept
• Its tresses wrapped about her side for years;
• And when she wrung them round over the floor,
• I heard the blood hiss through her fingers; so between her fingers hiss,
• That I sat straight So that I sat up in my bed and screamed
• 170Once and again; and once to once, she laughed.
• Look that you turn not now,—she's at your back:
• Gather your robe up, Father, and keep close,
• Or she'll sit down on it and send you mad.

• At Iglio in the first thin shade o' the hills
• The sand is black and red. The black was black
• When what was spilt that day sank into it,
• And the red scarcely darkened. There I stood
• This night with her, and saw the sand the same.

---

• What would you have me tell you? Father, father,
• 180How shall I make you know? You have not known
• The dreadful soul of woman, who one day
• Forgets the old and takes the new to heart,
• Forgets what man remembers, and therewith
• Forgets the man. Nor can I clearly tell
• How the change happened between her and me.
• Her eyes looked on me from an emptied heart
• When most my heart was full of her; and still
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• In every corner of myself I sought
• To find what service failed her; and no less
• 190Than in the good time past, there all was hers.
• What do you love? Your Heaven? Conceive it spread
• For one first year of all eternity
• All round you with all joys and gifts of God;
• And then when most your soul is blent with it
• And all yields song together,—then it stands
• O' the sudden like a pool that once gave back
• Your image, but now drowns it and is clear
• Again,—or like a sun bewitched, that burns
• Your shadow from you, and still shines in sight.
• 200How could you bear it? Would you not cry out,
• Among those eyes grown blind to you, those ears
• That hear no more your voice you hear the same,—
• ‘God! what is left but hell for company,
• But hell, hell, hell?’—until the name so breathed
• Whirled with hot wind and sucked you down in fire?
• Even so I stood the day her empty heart
• Left her place empty in our home, while yet
• I knew not why she went nor where she went
• Nor how to reach her: so I stood the day
• 210When to my prayers at last one sight of her
• Was granted, and I looked on heaven made pale
• With scorn, and heard heaven mock me in that laugh.

• O sweet, long sweet! Was that some ghost of you
• Even as your ghost that haunts me now,—twin shapes
• Of fear and hatred? May I find you yet
  page: 19  
• Mine when death wakes? Ah! be it even in flame,
• We may have sweetness yet, if you but say
• As once in childish sorrow: ‘Not my pain,
• My pain was nothing: oh your poor poor love,
• 220Your broken love!’

• My Father, it is hard have I not
• To tell Yet told you the last things of that last day
• Added TextOn which I went to meet her by the sea?
• Added TextO God, O God! but I must tell you all.
• But I must tell you all now. While I stopped
  Added TextMidway upon my journey, when I stopped
• To buy the dagger at the village fair,
• I saw two cursed rats about the place
• I knew for spies—blood-sellers both. That day
• Was not yet over; for three hours to come
• I prized my life: and so I looked around
• 230For safety. A poor painted mountebank
• Was playing pranks and shouting in a crowd.
• I knew he must have heard my name, so I
• Pushed past and whispered to him who I was,
• And of my danger. Straight he hustled me
• Into his booth, as it were in the trick,
• And brought me out next minute with my face
• All smeared in patches and a zany's gown;
• And there I handed him his cups and balls
• And swung the sand-bags round to clear the ring
• 240For half an hour. The spies came once and looked;
• And while they stopped, and made all sights and sounds
• Sharp to my startled senses, I remember
• A woman laughed above me. I looked up
• And saw her—a brown handsome harlot—leaning
• Half through a tavern window thick with vine.
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• Some man had come behind her in the room
• And caught her by her arms, and she had turned
• With that coarse empty laugh. I saw him there
• Munching her neck with kisses, while the vine
• 250Crawled in her back.

• And three hours afterwards,
• When she that I had run all risks to meet
• Laughed as I told you, my life burned to death
• Within me, for I thought it like the laugh
• Heard at the fair. She had not left me long;
• But all she might have changed to, or might change to,
• (I know nought since—she never speaks a word—)
• Seemed in that laugh. Have I not told you yet,
• Not told you all this time what happened, Father,
• When I had offered her the little knife,
• 260And bade her keep it for my sake that loved her,
• And she had laughed? Have I not told you yet?

• ‘Take it,’ I said to her the second time,
• ‘Take it and keep it.’ And then came a fire
• That burnt my hand; and then the fire was blood.
• And sea and sky were blood and fire, and all
• The day was one red blindness; till it seemed
• Within the whirling brain's entanglement
• That she or I or all things bled to death.
• And then I found her lying at my feet
• 270And knew that I had stabbed her, and saw still
• The look she gave me when she took the knife
• Deep in her heart, even as I bade her then,
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• And fell, and her stiff bod dice scooped the sand
• Into her bosom.

• And she keeps it, see,
• Do you not see she keeps it?—there, beneath
• Wet fingers and wet tresses, in her heart.
• For look you, when she stirs her hand, it shows
• The little hilt of horn and pearl,—even such
• A dagger as our women of the coast
• 280Twist in their garters.

• Father, I have done:
• And from her side now she unwinds the thick
• Dark hair; all round her side it is wet through,
• But like the sand at Iglio does not change.
• Now you may see the dagger clearly. Father,
• I have told all: tell me at once what hope
• Can reach me still. For now she draws it out
• Slowly, and only smiles as yet: look, Father,
• She scarcely smiles: but I shall hear her laugh
• Soon, when she shows the crimson blade to God.

   

• Lazy laughing languid Jenny,
• Fond of a kiss and fond of a guinea,
• Whose head is on my knee to-night;—
• (Have all our dances left it light
• With their wild tunes?)—Ah, Jenny, queen
• Of kisses which the blush between
• Could hardly make much daintier!— Nay,
• Poor flower left torn since yesterday
• Until to-morrow leave you bare;
• 10Poor handful of bright spring-water
• Flung in the whirlpool's shrieking face!—
• Poor shameful Jenny, full of grace
• Thus with your head upon my knee;—
• Whose person or whose purse may be
• The lodestar of your reverie?

• This room of yours, my Jenny, looks
• A change from mine so full of books,
• Whose serried ranks hold fast, forsooth,
• So many captive hours of youth,—
  page: 24  
• 20The hours they thieve from day and night
• To make one's cherished work come right,
• And leave it wrong for all their theft,
• Even as to-night my work was left:
• Until I vowed that since my brain
• And eyes of dancing seemed so fain,
• My feet should have some dancing too:—
• And thus it was I met with you.
• Well, I suppose 'twas hard to part,
• For here I am. And now, sweetheart,
• 30You seem too tired to get to bed.

• It was a careless life I led
• When rooms like this were scarce so strange
• Not long ago. What breeds the change,—
• The many aims or the few years?
• Because to-night it all appears
• Something I do not know again.

• The cloud's not danced out of my brain,—
• The cloud that made the books so swim/dim it turn and swim
• At every effort's interim.
  Added TextWhile hour by hour my the books grew dim
• 40Why, Jenny, as I watch you there,—
• For all your wealth of loosened hair,
• Your silk ungirdled and unlac'd
• And warm sweets open to the waist,
• All golden in the lamplight's gleam,—
• You know not what a book you seem,
• Half-read by lightning in a dream!
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• How should you know, my Jenny? Nay,
• And I should be ashamed to say:—
• Poor beauty, so well worth a kiss!
• 50But while my thought runs on like this
• With wasteful whims more than enough,
• I wonder what you're thinking of.

• If of myself you think at all,
• What is the thought?—conjectural
• On sorry matters best unsolved?—
• Or inly is each grace revolved
• To fit me with a lure?—or (sad
• To think!) perhaps you're merely glad
• That I'm not drunk or ruffianly
• 60And let you rest upon my knee.

• For sometimes, were the truth confess'd,
• You're thankful for a little rest,—
• Glad from the crush to rest within,
• Form the heart-sickness and the din
• Where envy's voice at virtue's pitch
• Mocks you because your gown is rich;
• And from the pale girl's dumb rebuke,
• Whose ill-clad grace and toil-worn look
• Proclaim the strength that keeps her weak
• 70And other nights than yours bespeak;
• And from the wise unchildish elf,
• To schoolmate lesser than himself
• Pointing you out, what thing you are:—
  page: 26  
• Yes, from the daily jeer and jar,
• From shame and shame's outbraving too,
• Is rest not sometimes sweet to you?—
• But most from the hatefulness of man
• Who spares not to end what he began,
• Whose acts are foul ill and his speech hard, ill,
• 80Who, having used you , afterward at his will,
• Thrusts you aside, as when I dine
• I serve the dishes and the wine.

• Well, handsome Jenny mine, sit up,
• I've filled our glasses, let us sup,
• And do not let me think of you,
• Lest shame of yours suffice for two.
• What, still so tired? Well, well then, keep
• Your head there, so you do not sleep;
• But that the weariness may pass
• 90And leave you merry, take this glass.
• Ah! lazy lily hand, more bless'd
• If ne'er in rings it had been dress'd
• Nor ever by a glove conceal'd!

• Behold the lilies of the field,
• They toil not neither do they spin;
• (So doth the ancient text begin,—
• Not of such rest as one of these
• Can share.) Another rest and ease
• Along each summer-sated path
• 100From its new lord the garden hath,
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• Than that whose spring in blessings ran
• Which praised the righteous husbandman,
• Ere yet, in days of hankering breath,
• The lilies sickened unto death.

• What, Jenny, are your lilies dead?
• Aye, and the snow-white leaves are spread
• Like winter on the garden-bed.
• But you had roses left in May,—
• They were not gone too. Jenny, nay,
• 110But must your roses die away?
• Even so; the leaves are curled apart,
• Still red as from the broken heart,
• And here's the naked stem of thorns.

• Nay, nay, mere words. Here nothing warns
• As yet of winter. Sickness here
• Or want alone could waken fear,—
• Nothing but passion wrings a tear.
• Except when there may rise unsought
• Haply at times a passing thought
• 120Of the old days which seem to be
• Much older than any history
• That is written in any book;
• When she would lie in fields and look
• Along the ground through the thick blown grass,
• And wonder where the city was,
• Far out of sight, whose broil and bale
• They told her then for a child's tale.

• Jenny, you know the city now.
• A child can tell the tale there, how
• 130Some things which are not yet enroll'd
• In market-lists are bought and sold
• Even till the early Sunday light,
• When Saturday night is market-night
• Everywhere, be it dry or wet,
• And market-night in the Haymarket.
• Our learned London children know,
• Poor Jenny, all your mirth and woe;
• Have seen your lifted silken skirt
• Advertize dainties through the dirt;
• 140Have seen your coach-wheels splash rebuke
• On virtue; and have learned your look
• When, wealth and health slipped past, you stare
• Along the streets alone, and there,
• Round the long park, across the bridge,
• The cold lamps at the pavement's edge
• Wind on together and apart,
• A fiery serpent for your heart.

• Let the thoughts pass, an empty cloud . !
• Suppose I were to think aloud,—
• 150What if to her all this were said?
• Why, as a volume seldom read
• Being opened halfway shuts again,
• So might the pages of her brain
• Be parted at such words, and thence
• Close back upon the dusty sense.

• At Judgment, one of his own race,
• As frail and lost as you, shall rise, —
• Through all time's hopes of kindred ties
• His daughter, with his mother's eyes?

• Each of such curdled lives alike
• 160A life for which my twelve hours strike
• And time must be and time must end.
• Hard to keep sight of! What might tend
• To give the thought clear presence? Well,
• Remember it is possible,
• Whether I please or do not please,
• That in the making each of these
• A separate man has lost his soul.

• Fair shines the gilded aureole
• In which our highest painters place
• 170Some living woman's simple face.
• And the stilled features thus descried
• As Jenny's long throat droops aside,—
• The loving underlip drawn in,
• The shadows where the cheeks are thin,
• And pure wide curve from ear to chin,—
• With Raffael's or Da Vinci's hand
• To show them to men's souls, might stand,
• Whole ages long, the whole world through,
• For preachings of what God can do.
• 180What has man done here? How atone,
• Great God, for this which man has done?
• And for the body and soul which by
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• Man's pitiless doom must now comply
• With lifelong hell, what lullaby
• Of sweet forgetful second birth
• Remains? All dark. No sign on earth
• What measure of God's rest endows
• The many mansions of his house.

• If but a woman's heart might see
• 190Such erring heart unerringly
• For once! But that can never be.

• Like a rose shut in a book
• In which pure women may not look,
• For its base pages claim control
• To crush the flower within the soul;
• Where through each dead rose-leaf that clings,
• Pale as transparent psyche-wings,
• To the vile text, are traced such things
• As might make lady's cheek indeed
• 200More than a living rose to read;
• So nought save foolish foulness may
• Watch with hard eyes the sure decay;
• And so the life-blood of this rose,
• Puddled with shameful knowledge, flows
• Through leaves no chaste hand may unclose:
• Yet still it keeps such faded show
• Of when 'twas gathered long ago,
• That the crushed petals' lovely grain,
• The sweetness of the sanguine stain,
  page: 33  
  Sig. D
• 210Seen of a woman's eyes, must make
• Her pitiful heart, so prone to ache,
• Love roses better for its sake:—
• Only that this can never be:—
• Even so unto her sex is she.

• Yet, Jenny, looking long at you,
• The woman almost fades from view.
• A cypher of man's changeless sum
• Of lust, past, present, and to come,
• Is left. A riddle that one shrinks
• 220To challenge from the scornful sphinx.

• Like a toad within a stone
• Seated while Time crumbles on;
• Which sits there since the earth was curs'd
• For Man's transgression at the first;
• Which, living through all centuries,
• Not once has seen the sun arise;
• Whose life, to its cold circle charmed,
• The earth's whole summers have not warmed;
• Which always—whitherso the stone
• 230Be cast flung—sits there, deaf, blind, alone;—
• Aye, and shall not be driven out
• Till that which shuts him round about
• Break at the very Master's stroke,
• And the dust thereof vanish as smoke,
• And the seed of Man vanish as dust:—
• Even so within this world is Lust.

• Come, come, what use in thoughts like this?
• Poor little Jenny, good to kiss,—
• You'd not believe by what strange roads
• 240Thought travels, when your beauty goads
• A man to-night to think of toads!
• Jenny, wake up. . . . Why, there's the dawn!

• And there's an early waggon drawn
• To market, and some sheep that jog
• Bleating before a barking dog;
• And the old streets come peering through
• Another night that London knew;
• And all as ghostlike as the lamps.

• So on the wings of day decamps
• 250My last night's frolic. Glooms begin
• To shiver off as lights creep in
• Past the gauze curtains half drawn-to,
• And the lamp's doubled shade grows blue,—
• Your lamp, my Jenny, kept alight,
• Like a wise virgin's, all one night!
• And in the alcove coolly spread
• Glimmers with dawn your empty bed;
• And yonder your fair face I see
• Reflected lying on my knee,
• 260Where teems with first foreshadowings
• Your pier-glass scrawled with diamond rings.

• And somehow in myself the dawn
  page: 35  
• Among stirred clouds and veils withdrawn
• Strikes greyly on her. Let her sleep.
• But will it wake her if I heap
• These cushions thus beneath her head
• Where my knee was? No,—there's your bed,
• My Jenny, while you dream. And there
• I lay among your golden hair
• 270Perhaps the subject of your dreams,
• These golden coins.

• For still one deems
• That Jenny's flattering sleep confers
• New magic on the magic purse,—
• Grim web, how clogged with shrivelled flies!
• Between the threads fine fumes arise
• And shape their pictures in the brain.
• There roll no streets in glare and rain,
• Nor flagrant man-swine whets his tusk;
• But delicately sighs in musk
• 280The homage of the dim boudoir;
• Or like a palpitating star
• Thrilled into song, the opera-night
• Breathes faint in the quick pulse of light;
• Or at the carriage-window shine
• Rich wares for choice; or, free to dine,
• Whirls through its hour of health (divine
• For her) the concourse of the Park.
• And though in the discounted dark
• Her functions there and here are one,
• 290Beneath the lamps and in the sun
  page: 36  
• There reigns at least the acknowledged belle
• Apparelled beyond parallel.
• Ah Jenny, yes, we know your dreams.

• For even the Paphian Venus seems
• A goddess o'er the realms of love,
• When silver-shrined in shadowy grove:
• Aye, or let offerings nicely placed
• But hide Priapus to the waist,
• And whoso looks on him shall see
• 300An eligible deity.

• Why, Jenny, waking here alone
• May help you to remember one!
• I think I see you when you wake,
• And rub your eyes for me, and shake
• My gold, in rising, from your hair,
• A Danaë for a moment there.

• Jenny, my love rang true! for still
• Love at first sight is vague, until
• That tinkling makes him audible.

• 310And must I mock you to the last,
• Ashamed of my own shame, —aghast
• Because some thoughts not born amiss
• Rose at a poor fair face like this?
• Well, of such thoughts so much I know:

   

• Consider the sea's listless chime:
• Time's self it is, made audible,—
• The murmur of the earth's own shell.
• Secret continuance sublime
• Is the sea's end: our sight may pass
• No furlong further. Since time was,
• This sound hath told the lapse of time.

• No quiet, which is death's,—it hath
• The mournfulness of ancient lif e,
• 10 Enduring always at dull strife.
• As the world's heart of rest and wrath,
• Its painful pulse is in the sands.
• Last utterly, the whole sky stands,
• Grey and not known, along its path.

• Listen alone beside the sea,
• Listen alone among the woods;
• Those voices of twin solitudes
• Shall have one sound alike to thee:
• Hark where the murmurs of thronged men
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• 20 Surge and sink back and surge again,—
• Still the one voice of wave and tree.

• Gather a shell from the strown beach
• And listen at its lips: they sigh
• The same desire and mystery,
• The echo of the whole sea's speech.
• And all mankind is thus at heart
• Not anything but what thou art:
• And Earth, Sea, Man, are all in each.

   

• Give honour unto Luke Evangelist;
• For he it was (the aged legends say)
• Who first taught Art to fold her hands and pray.
• Scarcely at once she dared to read the mist
• Of devious symbols: but soon having wist
• How sky-breadth and field-silence and this day
• Are symbols also in some deeper way,
• She looked through these to God and was God's priest.

• And if, past noon, her toil began to irk,
• 10And she sought talismans, and turned in vain
• To soulless self-reflections of man's skill,—
• Yet now, in this the twilight, she might still
• Kneel in the latter grass to pray again,
• Ere the night cometh and she may not work.