How they went home together through the wood,
  And how all life seemed focussed into one
Thought-dazzling spot that set ablaze the blood,
  What need to tell?  Fit language there is none 220
For the heart’s deepest things.  Who ever wooed
  As in his boyish hope he would have done? 
For, when the soul is fullest, the hushed tongue
Voicelessly trembles like a lute unstrung.

XXIX

But all things carry the heart’s messages
  And know it not, nor doth the heart well know,
But Nature hath her will; even as the bees,
  Blithe go-betweens, fly singing to and fro
With the fruit-quickening pollen;—­hard if these
  Found not some all unthought-of way to show 230
Their secret each to each; and so they did,
And one heart’s flower-dust into the other slid.

XXX

Young hearts are free; the selfish world it is
  That turns them miserly and cold as stone,
And makes them clutch their fingers on the bliss
  Which but in giving truly is their own;—­
She had no dreams of barter, asked not his,
  But gave hers freely as she would have thrown
A rose to him, or as that rose gives forth
Its generous fragrance, thoughtless of its worth. 240

XXXI

Her summer nature felt a need to bless,
  And a like longing to be blest again;
So, from her sky-like spirit, gentleness
  Dropt ever like a sunlit fall of rain,
And his beneath drank in the bright caress
  As thirstily as would a parched plain,
That long hath watched the showers of sloping gray
For ever, ever, falling far away.

XXXII

How should she dream of ill? the heart filled quite
  With sunshine, like the shepherd’s-clock at noon, 250
Closes its leaves around its warm delight;
  Whate’er in life is harsh or out of tune
Is all shut out, no boding shade of blight
  Can pierce the opiate ether of its swoon: 
Love is but blind as thoughtful justice is,
But naught can be so wanton-blind as bliss.

XXXIII

All beauty and all life he was to her;
  She questioned not his love, she only knew
That she loved him, and not a pulse could stir
  In her whole frame but quivered through and through 260
With this glad thought, and was a minister
  To do him fealty and service true,
Like golden ripples hasting to the land
To wreck their freight of sunshine on the strand.

XXXIV

O dewy dawn of love! that are
  Hung high, like the cliff-swallow’s perilous nest,
Most like to fall when fullest, and that jar
  With every heavier billow!  O unrest
Than balmiest deeps of quiet sweeter far! 
  How did ye triumph now in Margaret’s breast, 270
Making it readier to shrink and start
Than quivering gold of the pond-lily’s heart!