I WATCH’D her as she stoop’d to pluck
A wildflower in her hair to twine;
And wish’d that it had been my luck
To call her mine.
Anon I heard her rate with mad
Mad words her babe within its cot;
And felt particularly glad
That it had not.
I knew (such subtle brains have men)
That she was uttering what she shouldn’t;
And thought that I would chide, and then
I thought I wouldn’t:
Who could have gazed upon that face,
Those pouting coral lips, and chided?
A Rhadamanthus, in my place,
Had done as I did:
For ire wherewith our bosoms glow
Is chain’d there oft by Beauty’s spell;
And, more than that, I did not know
The widow well.
So the harsh phrase pass’d unreproved.
Still mute—(O brothers, was it sin?)—
I drank, unutterably moved,
Her beauty in:
And to myself I murmur’d low,
As on her upturn’d face and dress
The moonlight fell, “Would she say No,
By chance, or Yes?”
She stood so calm, so like a ghost
Betwixt me and that magic moon,
That I already was almost
A finish’d coon.
But when she caught adroitly up
And soothed with smiles her little daughter;
And gave it, if I’m right, a sup
Of barley-water;
And, crooning still the strange sweet lore
Which only mothers’ tongues can utter,
Snow’d with deft hand the sugar o’er
Its bread and butter;
And kiss’d it clingingly—(Ah, why
Don’t women do these things in private?)—
I felt that if I lost her, I
Should not survive it:
And from my mouth the words nigh flew—
The past, the future, I forgat ’em:
“Oh! if you’d kiss me as you do
That thankless atom!”
But this thought came ere yet I spake,
And froze the sentence on my lips:
“They err, who marry wives that make
Those little slips.”
It came like some familiar rhyme,
Some copy to my boyhood set;
And that’s perhaps the reason I’m
Unmarried yet.
Would she have own’d how pleased she was,
And told her love with widow’s pride?
I never found out that, because
I never tried.
Be kind to babes and beasts and birds:
Hearts may be hard, though lips are coral;
And angry words are angry words:
And that’s the moral.
“FOREVER.”
FOREVER; ’tis a single word!
Our rude forefathers deem’d it two:
Can you imagine so absurd
A view?
Forever! What abysms of woe
The word reveals, what frenzy, what
Despair! For ever (printed so)
Did not.
It looks, ah me! how trite and tame!
It fails to sadden or appal
Or solace—it is not the same
At all.
O thou to whom it first occurr’d
To solder the disjoin’d, and dower
Thy native language with a word
Of power:
We bless thee! Whether far or near
Thy dwelling, whether dark or fair
Thy kingly brow, is neither here
Nor there.
But in men’s hearts shall be thy throne,
While the great pulse of England beats:
Thou coiner of a word unknown
To Keats!
And nevermore must printer do
As men did long ago; but run
“For” into “ever,” bidding two
Be one.
Forever! passion-fraught, it throws
O’er the dim page a gloom, a glamour:
It’s sweet, it’s strange; and I suppose
It’s grammar.
Forever! ’Tis a single word!
And yet our fathers deem’d it two:
Nor am I confident they err’d;
Are you?