University of Virginia Library

Come up, my heart, come from thy hiding-place:
Stern memory grows importunate to make
Hard accusation; and if that I be
Not grossly misadvised, thou 'rt much to blame.

Was 't thou, that on a certain April night,
When sweetnesses were breaking all the buds,
And the red creeping vines of strawberries
Hung out their dainty blossoms toward the sun—
When first the dandelion from his cell
Came, like a miser dragging up his gold,
And making envious the poor traveler,
And the wild brook—thou wottest how it ran,
Betwixt the stubbly oat-field and the slope
Where, free from needless shepherding, that night
The sheep went cropping thistle leaves, and I
For the soft tinkling of their silver bells
Staid listening, so I said, and said again,
To be unto my conscience justified—
Was 't thou that tempted me to let the dew
Of midnight straiten all my pretty curls,
And woo the bat-like clinging damps to come
And bleach the morning blushes from my cheeks?
Ah, me! how many years since that same night
Have come and gone, nor brought a fellow to it!
Thou need'st not shake so, guilty prisoner,
For though those white hairs round my forehead teach
A judgment cold and passionless, and though
The hand that writes is palsy-touched, withal,
I cannot wrong so deeply, grievously,
The glorifying beauty of the world,
As to declare that thou art all condemned!

Yet stay, I pray thee: make some sweet excuse
To that staid saintly dame, Austerity;
For she and I have been a thousand times
At variance about her sober rule.
Once when I left my gleaning in the wheat,
(The time was June, sunset within an hour,)
And underneath a hedge, that rained down flowers
Of hawthorn and wild roses in my lap,
Sat idling with young Jocelyn, till that
The shadows of the mowers, stretching out
Like threatening ghosts, did cut our pastime off,
She rated me so mercilessly hard
That I was fain with fables to make peace.
I said that I was tired, and that a bird,
Soft-singing in the hedge, drew me that way;
And then I said I looked for catydids,
(It was three months before their chirping time,)
And that 't was pleasant to look thence and see
The sunshine topping all the wide-leaved corn,
And the young apples on the orchard boughs
With the betraying red upon their cheeks.
What other most improbable conceits
I told to her, I now remember not;
But I remember that her frowning brows
So chid me to confusion that I said
It was not Jocelyn that kept me there!
She smiled, and we since then are enemies.
Silent? thou hast no eloquence to win
Her cold regard upon my way wardness.
Well, be it so! and though the great wide world
Stare blank that I do soften judgment so,
Thou stand'st acquitted, yea, and justified.