Part 2 — IDYLLIC SKETCHES.

The skies have sunk, and hid the upper snow (Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie), The rainy clouds are filing fast below, And wet will be the path, and wet shall we. Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie. Ah dear, and where is he, a year agone, Who stepped beside and cheered us on and on? My sweetheart wanders far away from me, In foreign land or on a foreign sea. Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie. The lightning zigzags shoot across the sky (Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie), And through the vale the rains go sweeping by; Ah me, and when in shelter shall we be? Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie. Cold, dreary cold, the stormy winds feel they O’er foreign lands and foreign seas that stray (Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie). And doth he e’er, I wonder, bring to mind The pleasant huts and herds he left behind? And doth he sometimes in his slumbering see The feeding kine, and doth he think of me, My sweetheart wandering wheresoe’er it be? Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie. The thunder bellows far from snow to snow (Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie), And loud and louder roars the flood below. Heigho! but soon in shelter shall we be: Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie. Or shall he find before his term be sped, Some comelier maid that he shall wish to wed? (Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.) For weary is work, and weary day by day To have your comfort miles on miles away. Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie. Or may it be that I shall find my mate, And he returning see himself too late? For work we must, and what we see, we see, And God he knows, and what must be, must be, When sweethearts wander far away from me. Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie. The sky behind is brightening up anew (Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie), The rain is ending, and our journey too: Heigho! aha! for here at home are we:— In, Rose, and in, Provence and La Palie.

On grass, on gravel, in the sun, Or now beneath the shade, They went, in pleasant Kensington, A prentice and a maid. That Sunday morning’s April glow, How should it not impart A stir about the veins that flow To feed the youthful heart. Ah! years may come, and years may bring The truth that is not bliss, But will they bring another thing That can compare with this? I read it in that arm she lays So soft on his; her mien, Her step, her very gown betrays (What in her eyes were seen) That not in vain the young buds round, The cawing birds above, The air, the incense of the ground, Are whispering, breathing love. Ah! years may come, &c. To inclination, young and blind, So perfect, as they lent, By purest innocence confined Unconscious free consent. Persuasive power of vernal change, On this, thine earliest day, Canst thou have found in all thy range One fitter type than they? Ah! years may come, &c. Th’ high-titled cares of adult strife, Which we our duties call, Trades, arts, and politics of life, Say, have they after all, One other object, end or use Than that, for girl and boy, The punctual earth may still produce This golden flower of joy? Ah! years may come, &c. O odours of new-budding rose, O lily’s chaste perfume, O fragrance that didst first unclose The young Creation’s bloom! Ye hang around me, while in sun Anon and now in shade, I watched in pleasant Kensington The prentice and the maid. Ah! years may come, and years may bring The truth that is not bliss, But will they bring another thing That will compare with this?

Beside me,—in the car,—she sat, She spake not, no, nor looked to me: From her to me, from me to her, What passed so subtly, stealthily? As rose to rose that by it blows Its interchanged aroma flings; Or wake to sound of one sweet note The virtues of disparted strings. Beside me, nought but this!—but this, That influent as within me dwelt Her life, mine too within her breast, Her brain, her every limb she felt: We sat; while o’er and in us, more And more, a power unknown prevailed, Inhaling, and inhaled,—and still ’Twas one, inhaling or inhaled. Beside me, nought but this;—and passed; I passed; and know not to this day If gold or jet her girlish hair, If black, or brown, or lucid-grey Her eye’s young glance: the fickle chance That joined us, yet may join again; But I no face again could greet As hers, whose life was in me then. As unsuspecting mere a maid As, fresh in maidhood’s bloomiest bloom, In casual second-class did e’er By casual youth her seat assume; Or vestal, say, of saintliest clay, For once by balmiest airs betrayed Unto emotions too, too sweet To be unlingeringly gainsaid: Unowning then, confusing soon With dreamier dreams that o’er the glass Of shyly ripening woman-sense Reflected, scarce reflected, pass, A wife may-be, a mother she In Hymen’s shrine recalls not now, She first in hour, ah, not profane, With me to Hymen learnt to bow. Ah no!—Yet owned we, fused in one, The Power which e’en in stones and earths By blind elections felt, in forms Organic breeds to myriad births; By lichen small on granite wall Approved, its faintest feeblest stir Slow spreading, strengthening long, at last Vibrated full in me and her In me and her—sensation strange! The lily grew to pendent head, To vernal airs the mossy bank Its sheeny primrose spangles spread, In roof o’er roof of shade sun-proof Did cedar strong itself outclimb, And altitude of aloe proud Aspire in floreal crown sublime; Flashed flickering forth fantastic flies, Big bees their burly bodies swung, Rooks roused with civic din the elms, And lark its wild reveillez rung; In Libyan dell the light gazelle, The leopard lithe in Indian glade, And dolphin, brightening tropic seas, In us were living, leapt and played: Their shells did slow crustacea build, Their gilded skins did snakes renew. While mightier spines for loftier kind Their types in amplest limbs outgrew; Yea, close comprest in human breast, What moss, and tree, and livelier thing, What Earth, Sun, Star of force possest, Lay budding, burgeoning forth for Spring Such sweet preluding sense of old Led on in Eden’s sinless place The hour when bodies human first Combined the primal prime embrace, Such genial heat the blissful seat In man and woman owned unblamed, When, naked both, its garden paths They walked unconscious, unashamed: Ere, clouded yet in mistiest dawn, Above the horizon dusk and dun, One mountain crest with light had tipped That Orb that is the Spirit’s Sun; Ere dreamed young flowers in vernal showers Of fruit to rise the flower above, Or ever yet to young Desire Was told the mystic name of Love.