Angel in the House | Page 5

half desire,
And breathed the sunny wind that
rose
And blew the shadows o'er the Spire,
And toss'd the lilac's scented
plumes,
And sway'd the chestnut's thousand cones,
And fill'd my nostrils with
perfumes,

And shaped the clouds in waifs and zones,
And wafted down the
serious strain
Of Sarum bells, when, true to time,
I reach'd the Dean's, with heart
and brain
That trembled to the trembling chime.
2
'Twas half my home, six years ago.
The six years had not alter'd it:
Red-brick and ashlar, long and low,
With dormers and with oriels lit.
Geranium, lychnis, rose array'd
The windows, all wide open thrown;
And some one in the Study
play'd
The Wedding-March of Mendelssohn.
And there it was I last took
leave:
'Twas Christmas: I remember'd now
The cruel girls, who feign'd to
grieve,
Took down the evergreens; and how
The holly into blazes woke
The fire, lighting the large, low room,
A dim, rich lustre of old oak
And crimson velvet's glowing gloom.
No change had touch'd Dean
Churchill: kind,
By widowhood more than winters bent,
And settled in a 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.
4
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.
5
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