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 neighbours,Fellow-wights in lot and labours,Who descry the times as I,No such lucid legend tellsWhere she dwells.
Should I lapse to what I wasEre we met;(Such can not be, but becauseSome forgetLet 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!
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