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L'ENVOI.

TO M. W.

WHETHER my heart hath wiser grown or not,
In these three years, since I to thee inscribed,
Mine own betrothed, the firstlings of my muse,-
Poor windfalls of unripe experience,

Young uds plucked hastily by childish hands.
Not patient to await more full-blown flowers, -
At least it hath seen more of life and men,

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And pondered more, and grown a shade more sad;
Yet with no loss of hope or settled trust
In the benignness of that Providence,
Which shapes from out our elements awry
The grace and order that we wonder at,
The mystic harmony of right and wrong,
Both working out His wisdom and our good:

A trust, Beloved, chiefly learned of thee,
Who hast that gift of patient tenderness,

The instinctive wisdom of a woman's heart,

Which, seeing Right, can yet forgive the Wrong,
And, strong itself to comfort and sustain,

Yet leans with full-confiding piety

On the great Spirit that encircles all.

Less of that feeling, which the world calls love, Thou findest in my verse, but haply more

Of a more precious virtue, born of that,

The love of God, of Freedom, and of Man.

Thou knowest well what these three years have been, How we have filled and graced each other's hearts, And every day grown fuller of that bliss,

Which, even at first, seemed more than we could bear,

And thou, meantime, unchanged, except it be
That thy large heart is larger, and thine eyes
Of palest blue, more tender with the lore
Which taught me first how good it was to love;
And, if thy blessed name occur less oft,

Yet thou canst see 'the shadow of thy soul

In all my song, and art well-pleased to feel
That I could ne'er be rightly true to thee,
If I were recreant to higher aims.

Thou didst not grant to me so rich a fief
As thy full love, on any harder tenure
Than that of rendering thee a single heart;
And I do service for thy queenly gift

Then best, when I obey my soul, and tread
In reverence the path she beckons me.

'T were joy enough, if I could think that life

Were but a barren struggle after joy,

To live, and love, and never look beyond
The fair horizon of thy bounteous heart,
Whose sunny circle stretches wide enough
For me to find a heaped contentment in ;
To do naught else but garner every hour
My golden harvest of sweet memories,
And count my boundless revenue of smiles
And happy looks, and words so kind and gentle
That each doth seem the first to give thy heart,-

Content to let my waveless soul flow on,

Reflecting but the spring-time on its brink,

And thy clear spirit bending like a sky

O'er it,

secure that from thy virgin hands

My brows should never lack their dearest wreath :

But life hath nobler destinies than this,
Which but to strive for is reward enough,

Which to attain is all earth gives of peace.

Thou art not of those niggard souls, who deem
That Poesy is but to jingle words,

To string sweet sorrows for apologies

To hide the bareness of unfurnished hearts,

To prate about the surfaces of things,

And make more threadbare what was quite worn out:

Our common thoughts are deepest, and to give

Such beauteous tones to these, as needs must take
Men's hearts their captives to the end of time,
So that who hath not the choice gift of words
Takes these into his soul, as welcome friends,
To make sweet music of his joys and woes,
And be all Beauty's swift interpreters,

Links of bright gold 'twixt Nature and his heart.
This is the errand high of Poesy.

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