Ditty

BENEATH a knap where flownNestlings play,Within walls of weathered stone,Far awayFrom the files of formal houses,By the bough the firstling browses,Lives a Sweet: no merchants meet,No man barters, no man sellsWhere she dwells.

Upon that fabric fair“Here is she!"Seems written everywhereUnto me.But to friends and nodding neighbors,Fellow wights in lot and labors,Who descry the times as I,No such lucid legend tellsWhere she dwells.

Should I lapse to what I wasIn days by—(Such cannot be, but becauseSome loves dieLet me feign it)—none would noticeThat where she I know by rote isSpread a strange and withering change,Like a drying of the wellsWhere she dwells.

To feel I might have kissed—Loved as true—Otherwhere, nor Mine have missedMy life through,

Had I never wandered near her,Is a smart severe—severerIn the thought that she is nought,Even as I, beyond the dellsWhere she dwells.

And Devotion droops her glanceTo recallWhat bond-servants of ChanceWe are all.I but found her in that, goingOn my errant path unknowing,I did not out-skirt the spotThat no spot on earth excels—Where she dwells!

1870.