I have no strange or subtle thought,
     And the old things are best,
   In curious tongues I am untaught,
     Yet I know rest.

   I know the sifting oakleaves still
     Upon a twilit sky,
   I hear the fernowl on the hill
     Go wheeling by.

   I know my flocks and how they keep
     Their tunes of field and fold,
   My scholarship can sow and reap,
     From green to gold.

   The circled stars from down to sea
     I reckon as my gains,
   The swallows are as dear to me
     As loaded wains.

   Yet these were ghosts and fugitive,
     Until upon your step they came
   By revelation’s lips to live
     In your dear name.

   I saw you walking as dusk fell,
     And leaves and wains and heaven and birds
   Were miracles my blood may tell,
     And not my words.

“And yet I would not lose the tidings come
On so dear words, though the blood knows it all,
As the song says.”  She spoke; and from the valley
Slowly towards the mill, by ghostly flocks
That stole about the meadows of the moonrise,
They walked, and made this argument of love.

Lake.  How shall they stand for wisdom, who forbid
The body’s love, which is so small a thing,
Yet let the souls, or minds, or what you will
Be mated, as though spirit were the drudge,
For no-one’s heed, and limbs alone to be,
As though clay were the gold, inviolate? 
If I could grudge love coming anywhere,
Falling even on whom I loved in all,
I think the body at least should have no share
Of jealousy from me, which should be spent
Rather on minds meeting above my own,
Myself an exile from their understanding. 
Beloved, in the mating of our minds
I am all peace to walk thus in your presence,
And in that peace your body of my desire,
And all my earth, as passionate as any,
Seem snares to tempt us to the loss of all,
Since by them the world threatens this our peace,
Which else we may so gather, undenied. 
Then is not flesh merely the trouble of love,
When love goes thus, as love between us now?

.....

Zell took his hand, and her life was in his veins,
And his words beat back upon him as she spoke.

.....

Zell.  Dear, you are wise of all your books, and speech
Of windy downs, and polities of men,
And the old passions weaving history,
And strong and gentle things of sea and earth,
And the poor passing of the life of man,
But not in this.  You have your great-heart courage
For all such ardours as might make you seem
Some fabled hero standing against fate,
But not in this.  In sifting vanity
From the right honour, and building from ambition,
You have a vision constant as the tides,
But not in this.  They may look Sussex over
For any man who found a crooked word