The Angel in the House. Coventry Patmore

      Once more I came to Sarum Close,

         With joy half memory, 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.

      ’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.

      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.

      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’