Angel in the House | Page 5

cheerful mind,
As still forecasting heaven's content.?Well might his thoughts be fix'd on high,
Now she was there! Within her face?Humility and dignity
Were met in a most sweet embrace.?She seem'd expressly sent below
To teach our erring minds to see?The rhythmic change of time's swift flow
As part of still eternity.?Her life, all honour, observed, with awe
Which cross experience could not mar,?The fiction of the Christian law
That all men honourable are;?And so her smile at once conferr'd
High flattery and benign reproof;?And I, a rude boy, strangely stirr'd,
Grew courtly in my own behoof.?The years, so far from doing her wrong,
Anointed her with gracious balm,?And made her brows more and more young
With wreaths of amaranth and palm.
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Was this her eldest, Honor; prude,
Who would not let me pull the swing;?Who, kiss'd at Christmas, call'd me rude,
And, sobbing low, refused to sing??How changed! In shape no slender Grace,
But Venus; milder than the dove;?Her mother's air; her Norman face;
Her large sweet eyes, clear lakes of love.?Mary I knew. In former time
Ailing and pale, she thought that bliss?Was only for a better clime,
And, heavenly overmuch, scorn'd this.?I, rash with theories of the right,
Which stretch'd the tether of my Creed,?But did not break it, held delight
Half discipline. We disagreed.?She told the Dean I wanted grace.
Now she was kindest of the three,?And soft wild roses deck'd her face.
And, what, was this my Mildred, she?To herself and all a sweet surprise?
My Pet, who romp'd and roll'd a hoop??I wonder'd where those daisy eyes
Had found their touching curve and droop.
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Unmannerly times! But now we sat
Stranger than strangers; till I caught?And answer'd Mildred's smile; and that
Spread to the rest, and freedom brought.?The Dean talk'd little, looking on,
Of three such daughters justly vain.?What letters they had had from Bonn,
Said Mildred, and what plums from Spain!?By Honor I was kindly task'd
To excuse my never coming down?From Cambridge; Mary smiled and ask'd
Were Kant and Goethe yet outgrown??And, pleased, we talk'd the old days o'er;
And, parting, I for pleasure sigh'd.?To be there as a friend, (since more),
Seem'd then, seems still, excuse for pride;?For something that abode endued
With temple-like repose, an air?Of life's kind purposes pursued
With order'd freedom sweet and fair.?A tent pitch'd in a world not right
It seem'd, whose inmates, every one,?On tranquil faces bore the light
Of duties beautifully done,?And humbly, though they had few peers,
Kept their own laws, which seem'd to be?The fair sum of six thousand years'
Traditions of civility.
CANTO II--MARY AND MILDRED
PRELUDES.
I.--The Paragon.
When I behold the skies aloft
Passing the pageantry of dreams,?The cloud whose bosom, cygnet-soft,
A couch for nuptial Juno seems,?The ocean broad, the mountains bright,
The shadowy vales with feeding herds,?I from my lyre the music smite,
Nor want for justly matching words.?All forces of the sea and air,
All interests of hill and plain,?I so can sing, in seasons fair,
That who hath felt may feel again.?Elated oft by such free songs,
I think with utterance free to raise?That hymn for which the whole world longs,
A worthy hymn in woman's praise;?A hymn bright-noted like a bird's,
Arousing these song-sleepy times?With rhapsodies of perfect words,
Ruled by returning kiss of rhymes.?But when I look on her and hope
To tell with joy what I admire,?My thoughts lie cramp'd in narrow scope,
Or in the feeble birth expire;?No mystery of well-woven speech,
No simplest phrase of tenderest fall,?No liken'd excellence can reach
Her, thee most excellent of all,?The best half of creation's best,
Its heart to feel, its eye to see,?The crown and complex of the rest,
Its aim and its epitome.?Nay, might I utter my conceit,
'Twere after all a vulgar song,?For she's so simply, subtly sweet,
My deepest rapture does her wrong.?Yet is it now my chosen task
To sing her worth as Maid and Wife;?Nor happier post than this I ask,
To live her laureate all my life.?On wings of love uplifted free,
And by her gentleness made great,?I'll teach how noble man should be
To match with such a lovely mate;?And then in her may move the more
The woman's wish to be desired,?(By praise increased), till both shall soar,
With blissful emulations fired.?And, as geranium, pink, or rose
Is thrice itself through power of art,?So may my happy skill disclose
New fairness even in her fair heart;?Until that churl shall nowhere be
Who bends not, awed, before the throne?Of her affecting majesty,
So meek, so far unlike our own;?Until (for who may hope too much
From her who wields the powers of love?)?Our lifted lives at last shall touch
That happy goal to which they move;?Until we find, as darkness rolls
Away, and evil mists dissolve,?That nuptial contrasts are the poles
On which the heavenly spheres revolve.
II.--Love at Large.
Whene'er I come where ladies are,
How sad soever I was before,?Though like a ship frost-bound and far
Withheld in ice from the ocean's roar,?Third-winter'd in that dreadful dock,
With stiffen'd cordage, sails decay'd,?And crew that care for calm and shock
Alike, too dull to be dismay'd,?Yet, if I come where ladies are,
How sad soever I was before,?Then is my sadness banish'd far,
And I am like that