LATER POEMS.
141
of which proposals he listens with various degrees of impatience. At last she requests him to fix the day himself, and he eagerly decides on the morrow.
In the twelfth and last song, he apostrophizes the "light so low in the vale," and tenderly calls on the familiar places of the neighbourhood.
"O the woods and the meadows,
Woods where we hid from the wet,
Stiles where we stay'd to be kind,
Meadows in which we met."
Woods where we hid from the wet,
Stiles where we stay'd to be kind,
Meadows in which we met."
And he ends by interrogating his own heart—
"Heart, are you great enough
For a love that never tires?
O heart, are you great enough for love?
I have heard of thorns and briers.
For a love that never tires?
O heart, are you great enough for love?
I have heard of thorns and briers.
"Over the thorns and briers,
Over the meadows and stiles,
Over the world to the end of it,
Flash for a million miles."
Over the meadows and stiles,
Over the world to the end of it,
Flash for a million miles."
In exquisite perfection of workmanship, this poem—conducted like "Maud" (though with a happier termination), almost wholly by a lover's snatches of soliloquy
