Ere seen I loved, and loved thee seen, and saw

Thee woman through the crust of iron moods
That masked thee from men's reverence up, and forced

Sweet love on pranks of saucy boyhood: now,
Given back to life, to life indeed, through thee,

Indeed I love: the new day comes, the light
Dearer for night, as dearer thou for faults

Lived over: lift thine eyes; my doubts are dead,
My haunting sense of hollow shows: the change,

This truthful change in thee has killed it. Dear,
Look up, and let thy nature strike on mine,

Like yonder morning on the blind half-world;
Approach and fear not; breathe upon my brows;

In that fine air I tremble, all the past
Melts mist-like into this bright hour, and this

Is morn to more, and all the rich to-come
Reels, as the golden Autumn woodland reels

Athwart the smoke of burning weeds. Forgive me,
I waste my heart in signs: let be. My bride,

My wife, my life. O we will walk this world,
Yoked in all exercise of noble end,

And so through those dark gates across the wild
That no man knows. Indeed I love thee: come,

Yield thyself up: my hopes and thine are one:
Accomplish thou my manhood and thyself;

Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me.'
CONCLUSION

So closed our tale, of which I give you all
The randomscheme as wildly as it rose:

The words are mostly mine; for when we ceased
There came a minute's pause, and Walter said,

'I wish she had not yielded!' then to me,
'What, if you drest it up poetically?'

So prayed the men, the women: I gave assent:
Yet how to bind the scattered scheme of seven

Together in one sheaf? What style could suit?
The men required that I should give throughout

The sort of mock-heroic gigantesque,
With which we bantered little Lilia first:

The women--and perhaps they felt their power,
For something in the ballads which they sang,

Or in their silent influence as they sat,
Had ever seemed to wrestle with burlesque,

And drove us, last, to quite a solemn close--
They hated banter, wished for something real,

A gallant fight, a noble princess--why
Not make her true-heroic--true-sublime?

Or all, they said, as earnest as the close?
Which yet with such a frameworkscarce could be.

Then rose a little feud betwixt the two,
Betwixt the mockers and the realists:

And I, betwixt them both, to please them both,
And yet to give the story as it rose,

I moved as in a strange diagonal,
And maybe neither pleased myself nor them.

But Lilia pleased me, for she took no part
In our dispute: the sequel of the tale

Had touched her; and she sat, she plucked the grass,
She flung it from her, thinking: last, she fixt

A showery glance upon her aunt, and said,
'You--tell us what we are' who might have told,

For she was crammed with theories out of books,
But that there rose a shout: the gates were closed

At sunset, and the crowd were swarming now,
To take their leave, about the garden rails.

So I and some went out to these: we climbed
The slope to Vivian-place, and turning saw

The happy valleys, half in light, and half
Far-shadowing from the west, a land of peace;

Gray halls alone among their massive groves;
Trim hamlets; here and there a rustic tower

Half-lost in belts of hop and breadths of wheat;
The shimmering glimpses of a stream; the seas;

A red sail, or a white; and far beyond,
Imagined more than seen, the skirts of France.

'Look there, a garden!' said my college friend,
The Tory member's elder son, 'and there!

God bless the narrow sea which keeps her off,
And keeps our Britain, whole within herself,

A nation yet, the rulers and the ruled--
Some sense of duty, something of a faith,

Some reverence for the laws ourselves have made,
Some patient force to change them when we will,

Some civic manhood firm against the crowd--
But yonder, whiff! there comes a sudden heat,

The gravest citizen seems to lose his head,
The king is scared, the soldier will not fight,

The little boys begin to shoot and stab,
A kingdom topples over with a shriek

Like an old woman, and down rolls the world
In mock heroics stranger than our own;

Revolts, republics, revolutions, most
No graver than a schoolboys' barring out;

Too comic for the serious things they are,
Too solemn for the comic touches in them,

Like our wild Princess with as wise a dream
As some of theirs--God bless the narrow seas!

I wish they were a whole Atlantic broad.'
'Have patience,' I replied, 'ourselves are full

Of social wrong; and maybe wildest dreams
Are but the needful preludes of the truth:

For me, the genial day, the happy crowd,
The sport half-science, fill me with a faith.

This fine old world of ours is but a child
Yet in the go-cart. Patience! Give it time

To learn its limbs: there is a hand that guides.'
In such discourse we gained the garden rails,

And there we saw Sir Walter where he stood,
Before a tower of crimson holly-hoaks,

Among six boys, head under head, and looked
No little lily-handed Baronet he,

A great broad-shouldered genial Englishman,
A lord of fat prize-oxen and of sheep,

A raiser of huge melons and of pine,
A patron of some thirty charities,

A pamphleteer on guano and on grain,
A quarter-sessions chairman, abler none;

Fair-haired and redder than a windy morn;
Now shaking hands with him, now him, of those

That stood the nearest--now addressed to speech--
Who spoke few words and pithy, such as closed

Welcome, farewell, and welcome for the year
To follow: a shout rose again, and made

The long line of the approaching rookery swerve
From the elms, and shook the branches of the deer

From slope to slope through distant ferns, and rang
Beyond the bourn of sunset; O, a shout

More joyful than the city-roar that hails
Premier or king! Why should not these great Sirs

Give up their parks some dozen times a year
To let the people breathe? So thrice they cried,

I likewise, and in groups they streamed away.
But we went back to the Abbey, and sat on,

So much the gathering darkness charmed: we sat
But spoke not, rapt in nameless reverie,

Perchance upon the future man: the walls
Blackened about us, bats wheeled, and owls whooped,

And gradually the powers of the night,
That range above the region of the wind,

Deepening the courts of twilight broke them up
Through all the silent spaces of the worlds,

Beyond all thought into the Heaven of Heavens.
Last little Lilia, rising quietly,

Disrobed the glimmering statue of Sir Ralph
From those rich silks, and home well-pleased we went.

End

• forgive [fə´giv] vt.原谅，谅解，宽恕 (初中英语单词)
• scheme [ski:m] n.计划；阴谋，诡计 (初中英语单词)
• mostly [´məustli] ad.主要地；多半；通常 (初中英语单词)
• solemn [´sɔləm] a.严肃的；隆重的 (初中英语单词)
• gallant [´gælənt, gə´lænt] a.英勇的；华丽的 (初中英语单词)
• earnest [´ə:nist] a.认真的 n.认真；诚恳 (初中英语单词)
• scarce [skeəs, skers] a.缺乏的；稀有的 (初中英语单词)
• dispute [di´spju:t] v.&n.争论，辩论；争吵 (初中英语单词)
• sunset [´sʌnset] n.日落；晚霞 (初中英语单词)
• stream [stri:m] n.河 vi.流出；飘扬 (初中英语单词)
• princess [,prin´ses] n.公主；王妃；亲王夫人 (初中英语单词)
• farewell [feə´wel] int.再见 n.&a.告别 (初中英语单词)
• welcome [´welkəm] a.受欢迎的；可喜的 (初中英语单词)
• likewise [´laikwaiz] ad.同样地；也，又 (初中英语单词)
• twilight [´twailait] n.黎明；黄昏 (初中英语单词)
• statue [´stætʃu:] n.塑像，雕像 (初中英语单词)
• reverence [´revərəns] n.尊敬；敬畏；尊严 (高中英语单词)
• boyhood [´bɔihud] n.少年时代(期) (高中英语单词)
• woodland [´wudlənd] n.树林，林地 (高中英语单词)
• manhood [´mænhud] n.人格；男子气概 (高中英语单词)
• random [´rændəm] n.偶然的行动 (高中英语单词)
• massive [´mæsiv] a.厚实的；魁伟的 (高中英语单词)
• rustic [´rʌstik] a.田野的；质朴的 (高中英语单词)
• discourse [´diskɔ:s] n.论文；演说；说教 (高中英语单词)
• crimson [´krimzən] a.&n.深(紫)红(的) (高中英语单词)
• patron [´peitrən] n.庇护人，保护人；赞助人 (高中英语单词)
• joyful [´dʒɔifəl] a.高兴的，充满快乐的 (高中英语单词)
• wrestle [´resəl] n.&v.摔交；搏斗；角力 (英语四级单词)
• genial [´dʒi:niəl] a.愉快的；和蔼的 (英语四级单词)
• thrice [θrais] ad.三倍地；三次 (英语四级单词)
• gathering [´gæðəriŋ] n.集会，聚集 (英语四级单词)
• truthful [´tru:θfəl] a.诚实的；真实的 (英语六级单词)
• framework [´freimwə:k] n.骨架；计划；机构 (英语六级单词)
• nameless [´neimlis] a.无名字的；无名声的 (英语六级单词)