Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/321

Rh The days went by. I took up the old days With all their Tuscan pleasures, worn and spoiled,— Like some lost book we dropt in the long grass On such a happy summer-afternoon When last we read it with a loving friend, And find in autumn, when the friend is gone, The grass cut short, the weather changed, too late, And stare at, as at something wonderful For sorrow,—thinking how two hands, before, Had held up what is left to only one, And how we smiled when such a vehement nail Impressed the tiny dint here, which presents This verse in fire for ever! Tenderly And mournfully I lived. I knew the birds And insects,—which look fathered by the flowers And emulous of their hues: I recognised The moths, with that great overpoise of wings Which makes a mystery of them how at all They can stop flying: butterflies, that bear Upon their blue wings such red embers round, They seem to scorch the blue air into holes Each flight they take: and fire-flies, that suspire In short soft lapses of transported flame Across the tingling Dark, while overhead The constant and inviolable stars Outburn those lights-of-love: melodious owls, (If music had but one note and was sad, ’Twould sound just so) and all the silent swirl Of bats, that seem to follow in the air Some grand circumference of a shadowy dome