The Victories of Love, and Other Poems. Coventry Patmore

      Mother, I smile at your alarms!

      I own, indeed, my Cousin’s charms,

      But, like all nursery maladies,

      Love is not badly taken twice.

      Have you forgotten Charlotte Hayes,

      My playmate in the pleasant days

      At Knatchley, and her sister, Anne,

      The twins, so made on the same plan,

      That one wore blue, the other white,

      To mark them to their father’s sight;

      And how, at Knatchley harvesting,

      You bade me kiss her in the ring,

      Like Anne and all the others?  You,

      That never of my sickness knew,

      Will laugh, yet had I the disease,

      And gravely, if the signs are these:

         As, ere the Spring has any power,

      The almond branch all turns to flower,

      Though not a leaf is out, so she

      The bloom of life provoked in me

      And, hard till then and selfish, I

      Was thenceforth nought but sanctity

      And service: life was mere delight

      In being wholly good and right,

      As she was; just, without a slur;

      Honouring myself no less than her;

      Obeying, in the loneliest place,

      Ev’n to the slightest gesture, grace,

      Assured that one so fair, so true,

      He only served that was so too.

      For me, hence weak towards the weak,

      No more the unnested blackbird’s shriek

      Startled the light-leaved wood; on high

      Wander’d the gadding butterfly,

      Unscared by my flung cap; the bee,

      Rifling the hollyhock in glee,

      Was no more trapp’d with his own flower,

      And for his honey slain.  Her power,

      From great things even to the grass

      Through which the unfenced footways pass,

      Was law, and that which keeps the law,

      Cherubic gaiety and awe;

      Day was her doing, and the lark

      Had reason for his song; the dark

      In anagram innumerous spelt

      Her name with stars that throbb’d and felt;

      ’Twas the sad summit of delight

      To wake and weep for her at night;

      She turn’d to triumph or to shame

      The strife of every childish game;

      The heart would come into my throat

      At rosebuds; howsoe’er remote,

      In opposition or consent,

      Each thing, or person, or event,

      Or seeming neutral howsoe’er,

      All, in the live, electric air,

      Awoke, took aspect, and confess’d

      In her a centre of unrest,

      Yea, stocks and stones within me bred

      Anxieties of joy and dread.

         O, bright apocalyptic sky

      O’erarching childhood!  Far and nigh

      Mystery and obscuration none,

      Yet nowhere any moon or sun!

      What reason for these sighs?  What hope,

      Daunting with its audacious scope

      The disconcerted heart, affects

      These ceremonies and respects?

      Why stratagems in everything?

      Why, why not kiss her in the ring?

      ’Tis nothing strange that warriors bold,

      Whose fierce, forecasting eyes behold

      The city they desire to sack,

      Humbly begin their proud attack

      By delving ditches two miles off,

      Aware how the fair place would scoff

      At hasty wooing; but, O child,

      Why thus approach thy playmate mild?

         One morning, when it flush’d my thought

      That, what in me such wonder wrought

      Was call’d, in men and women, love,

      And, sick with vanity thereof,

      I, saying loud, ‘I love her,’ told

      My secret to myself, behold

      A crisis in my mystery!

      For, suddenly, I seem’d to be

      Whirl’d round, and bound with showers of threads,

      As when the furious spider sheds

      Captivity upon the fly

      To still his buzzing till he die;

      Only, with me, the bonds that flew,

      Enfolding, thrill’d me through and through

      With bliss beyond aught heaven can have,

      And pride to dream myself her slave.

         A long, green slip of wilder’d land,

      With Knatchley Wood on either hand,

      Sunder’d our home from hers.  This day

      Glad was I as I went her way.

      I stretch’d my arms to the sky, and sprang

      O’er the elastic sod, and sang

      ‘I love her, love her!’ to an air

      Which with the words came then and there;

      And even now, when I would know

      All was not always dull and low,

      I mind me awhile of the sweet strain

      Love taught me in that lonely lane.

         Such glories fade, with no more mark

      Than when the sunset dies to dark.

      They pass, the rapture and the grace

      Ineffable, their only trace

      A heart which, having felt no less

      Than pure and perfect happiness,

      Is duly dainty of delight;

      A patient, poignant appetite

      For pleasures that exceed so much

      The poor things which the world calls such.

      That,