For you remember, you had set,

That morning, on the casement-edge A long green box of mignonette,

And you were leaning from the ledge:
And when I raised my eyes, above

They met with two so full and bright –
Such eyes! I swear to you, my love,
That these have never lost their light.

I loved, and love dispell'd the fear
That I should die an early death:
For love possess'd the atmosphere,

And fill'd the breast with purer breath.
My mother thought, what ails the boy?
For I was alter'd, and began
To move about the house with joy,
And with the certain step of man.

I loved the brimming wave that swam
Thro' quiet meadows round the mill,

The sleepy pool above the dam,

The pool beneath it never still,

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And " by that lamp," I thought, "she sits!"

The white chalk-quarry from the hill

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Gleam'd to the flying moon by fits.

The lanes, you know, were white with May,

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And dews, that would have fall'n in tears,

I kiss'd away before they fell.

A trifle, sweet! which true love spells

True love interprets — right alone.
His light upon the letter dwells,
For all the spirit is his own.

So, if I waste words now, in truth
You must blame Love. His early rage
Had force to make me rime in youth,
And makes me talk too much in age.

And now those vivid hours are gone,
Like mine own life to me thou art,
Where Past and Present, wound in one,
Do make a garland for the heart:
So sing that other song I made,

Half-anger'd with my happy lot
The day, when in the chestnut shade
I found the blue Forget-me-not.

Love that hath us in the net,
Can he pass, and we forget?
Many suns arise and set.
Many a chance the years beget.
Love the gift is Love the debt.

Even so.

Love is hurt with jar and fret.
Love is made a vague regret.

Eyes with idle tears are wet.

Idle habit links us yet.

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What is love? for we forget:
Ah, no! no!

Look thro' mine eyes with thine.

True wife,

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Round my true heart thine arms entwine;

My other dearer life in life,

Look thro' my very soul with thine!

Untouch'd with any shade of years,

May those kind eyes forever dwell!

They have not shed a many tears,

Dear eyes, since first I knew them well.

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Yet tears they shed: they had their part
Of sorrow for when time was ripe,

THAT story which the bold Sir Bedivere,
First made and latest left of all the knights,
Told, when the man was no more than a voice
In the white winter of his age, to those
With whom he dwelt, new faces, other minds.

For on their march to westward, Bedivere, Who slowly paced among the slumbering host, Heard in his tent the moanings of the King:

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