"Not so quickly!" she retorted,

"I confess where'er you go, you Find for things, names;-shows for actions, and pure gold for honor clear; But when all is run to symbol in the Social, I will throw you The world's book which now reads dryly, and sit down with Silence here."

Half in playfulness she spoke, I thought, and half in indignation;

Friends who listened laughed her words off while her lovers deemed her fair;

A fair woman-flushed with feeling, in her noble-lighted station Near the statue's white reposing, —

and both bathed in sunny air! With the trees round, not so distant but you heard their vernal

Or at times a modern volume, — Wordsworth's solemnthoughted idyl,

Howitt's ballad-verse, or Tennyson's enchanted revery,

Or from Browning some "Pomegranate," which, if cut deep down the middle,

Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity.

Or at times I read there, hoarsely, some new poem of my making,Poets ever fail in reading their own verses to their worth, For the echo in you breaks upon the

words which you are speaking, And the chariot-wheels jar in the gate through which you drive them forth.

After, when we were grown tired of books, the silence round us flinging

A slow arm of sweet compression, felt with beatings at the breast,

And she spake such good thoughts natural, as if she always thought them, — And had sympathies so rapid, open, free as bird on branch, Just as ready to fly east as west, whichever way besought them, In the birchen wood a chirrup, or a cock-crow in the grange.

In her utmost rightness there is truth, - and often she speaks lightly, Has a grace in being gay, which even mournful souls approve, For the root of some grave earnest thought is under-struck rightly,

SO

"If we trod the deeps of ocean, if we struck the stars in rising, If we wrapped the globe intensely with one hot electric breath, 'Twere but power within our tether,no new spirit-power comprising, And in life we were not greater men, nor bolder men in death."

She was patient with my talking; and I loved her, loved her certes,

As I loved all Heavenly objects, with uplifted eyes and hands!

As I loved pure inspirations, -loved the graces, loved the virtues, In a Love content with writing his own name on desert sands.

Or at least I thought so purely!thought no idiot Hope was raising Any crown to crown Love's silence,silent Love that sat alone, Out, alas! the stag is like me,

he,

that tries to go on grazing With the great deep gun-wound in his neck, then reels with sudden moan.

It was thus I reeled! I told you that her hand had many suitors But she smiles them down imperially, as Venus did the waves;And with such a gracious coldness, that they cannot press their futures

On the present of her courtesy, which yieldingly enslaves.

And this morning, as I sat alone within the inner chamber, With the great saloon beyond it lost in pleasant thought serene, For I had been reading Camoens

that poem you remember, Which his lady's eyes are praised in, as the sweetest ever seen;

And the book lay open, and my thought flew from it, taking from it

A vibration and impulsion to an end beyond its own,

As the branch of a green osier, when a child would overcome it, Springs up freely from his clasping and goes swinging in the sun.

As I mused I heard a murmur, — it grew deep as it grew longer — Speakers using earnest language,

66 Lady Geraldine, you would!” And I heard a voice that pleaded

ever on, in accents stronger, As a sense of reason gave it power to make its rhetoric good.

Very finely courteous,-far too proud to doubt his domination Of the common people, - he atones for grandeur by a bow.

High, straight forehead, nose of eagle, cold blue eyes, of less expression

Than resistance, coldly casting off the looks of other men, As steel, arrows, unelastic lips, which seem to taste possession,

And be cautious lest the common air should injure or distrain.

For the rest, accomplished, upright,ay, and standing by his order With a bearing not ungraceful; fond of art, and letters too; Just a good man made a proud man, as the sandy rocks that border A wild coast, by circumstances, in a regnant ebb and flow.

Or attempted-for with gravity and instance she replied, "Nay, indeed, my lord, this talk is vain, and we had best eschew it, And pass on like friends, to other points less easy to decide."

What he said again, I know not. It is likely that his trouble

Worked his pride up to the surface, for she answered in slow scorn,

"And your lordship judges rightly. Whom I marry, shall be noble, Ay, and wealthy. I shall never blush to think how he was born."

There, I maddened! her words stung me! Life swept through me into fever,

And my soul sprang up astonished; sprang full-statured in an hour: Know you what it is when anguish, with apocalyptic NEVER, To a Pythian height dilates you,

and despair sublimes to power?

From my brain the soul-wings budded!-waved a flame about my body, Whence conventions coiled to ashes: I felt self-drawn out, as man, From amalgamate false natures; and I saw the skies grow ruddy With the deepening feet of angels, and I knew what spirits can.

I was mad, -inspired,

say either! anguish worketh inspiration,Was a man or beast—perhaps so; for the tiger roars when speared; And I walked on, step by step, along the level of my passion Oh my soul! and passed the doorway to her face, and never feared.

He had left her, -peradventure, when my footstep proved my coming,

But for her, - she half arose, then sat - grew scarlet and grew pale: Oh she trembled!-'tis so always with a worldly man or woman In the presence of true spirits,- what else can they do but quail?

Oh, she fluttered like a tame bird, in among its forest brothers Far too strong for it! then drooping, bowed her face upon her hands,

And I spake out wildly, fiercely, brutal truths of her and others! I, she planted in the desert, swathed her, windlike, with my sands.