Page:Poems Barrett.djvu/155

Why, her greyhound followed also! dogs—we both were dogs for scorning—
To he sent hack when she pleased it, and her path lay through the wheat.

And thus, morning after morning, spite of oath, and spite of sorrow,
Did I follow at her drawing, while the week-days passed along;
Just to feed the swans this noontide, or to see the fawns to-morrow,—
Or to teach the hill-side echo, some sweet Tuscan in a song.

Ay, and sometimes on the hill-side, while we sate down in the gowans,
With the forest green behind us, and its shadow cast before;
And the river running under; and across it, from the rowans,
A brown partridge whirring near us, till we felt the air it bore,—

There, obedient to her praying, did I read aloud the poems
Made by Tuscan flutes, or instruments more various, of our own;
Read the pastoral parts of Spenser—or the subtle interflowings
Found in Petrarch's sonnets—here's the book—the leaf is folded down!—

Or at times a modern volume,—Wordsworth's solemn-thoughted idyl,
Howitt's ballad-dew, or Tennyson's enchanted reverie,—
Or from Browning some "Pomegranate," which, if cut deep down the middle,
Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity!—

Or I read there sometimes, hoarsely, some new poem of my making—
Oh, your poets never read their own best verses to their worth,—