Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/206

Rh Being present also in the unkissed lips, And eyes undried because there’s none to ask The reason they grew moist. To sit alone, And think, for comfort, how, that very night, Affianced lovers, leaning face to face With sweet half-listenings for each other’s breath, Are reading haply from some page of ours, To pause with a thrill, as if their cheeks had touched, When such a stanza, level to their mood, Seems floating their own thoughts out—‘so I feel For thee,’—‘And I, for thee: this poet knows What everlasting love is!’—how, that night. A father, issuing from the misty roads Upon the luminous round of lamp and hearth And happy children, having caught up first The youngest there until it shrunk and shrieked To feel the cold chin prick its dimple through With winter from the hills, may throw i’ the lap Of the eldest, (who has learnt to drop her lids To hide some sweetness newer than last year’s) Our book and cry,. . ‘Ah you, you care for rhymes; So here be rhymes to pore on under trees, When April comes to let you! I’ve been told They are not idle as so many are, But set hearts beating pure as well as fast: It’s yours, the book: I’ll write your name in it,— That so you may not lose, however lost In poet’s lore and charming reverie, The thought of how your father thought of you