Might have been happy: but what lot is pure? We took them all, till she was left alone What know we of the secret of a man? His nerves were wrong. What ails us, who are sound, That we should mimic this raw fool the world, Which charts us all in its coarse blacks or whites, As ruthless as a baby with a worm, As cruel as a schoolboy ere he grows But put your best foot forward, or I fear That we shall miss the mail: and here it comes As you shall see--three pyebalds and a roan. ME, my pleasant rambles by the lake, My sweet, wild, fresh three quarters of a year, My one Oasis in the dust and drouth Of city life! I was a sketcher then: See here, my doing: curves of mountain, bridge, Boat, island, ruins of a castle, built When men knew how to build, upon a rock With turrets lichen-gilded like a rock: And here, new-comers in an ancient hold, New-comers from the Mersey, millionaires, Here lived the Hills-a Tudor-chimnied bulk Of mellow brickwork on an isle of bowers. O me, my pleasant rambles by the lake With Edwin Morris and with Edward Bull The curate; he was fatter than his cure. But Edwin Morris, he that knew the names, Long learned names of agaric, moss and fern, Who forged a thousand theories of the rocks, Who taught me how to skate, to row, to swim, Who read me rhymes elaborately good, His own-I call'd him Crichton, for he seem'd All-perfect, finish'd to the finger nail. And once I ask'd him of his early life, And his first passion; and he answer'd me; And well his words became him: was he not A full-cell'd honeycomb of eloquence Stored from all flowers? Poet-like he spoke. "My love for Nature is as old as I; But thirty moons, one honeymoon to that, And three rich sennights more, my love for her. My love for Nature and my love for her, Of different ages, like twin-sisters grew, Twin-sisters differently beautiful. To some full music rose and sank the sun, And some full music seem'd to move and change With all the varied changes of the dark, And either twilight and the day between ; For daily hope fulfill'd, to rise again Revolving toward fulfilment, made it sweet To walk, to sit, to sleep, to wake, to breathe." Or this or something like to this he spoke. Then said the fat-faced curate Edward Bull, "I take it, God made the woman for the man, And for the good and increase of the world. A pretty face is well, and this is well, To have a dame indoors, that trims us up, I say, God made the woman for the man, 66 'Parson," said I, "you pitch the pipe too low: But I have sudden touches, and can run My faith beyond my practice into his : I do not hear the bells upon my cap, |