Page:The Garden of Years.djvu/61



The chiefest lessons Life makes clear are those

She teaches most at leisure. Sure and slow

Successive leaves of her wise book unclose;

And, day by day, the vital story grows

To consummation, till we come to know

Its perfect purport. All that lay below

The rapture of my earliest glimpse of you

Only that stoic tutor Time could show:—

Long evenings of reiterated dew

Alone perfect the perfume of the rose!

The patient years polished with practised hand

Love’s crystal to a smooth symmetric swell,

Till the curved lens lay, accurately planned,

Flawlessly fitted to the brazen band

Within whose compass it was meant to dwell.

Then from my eyes the scales of blindness fell:

Undreamt-of planets swam into my ken.

And new-mapped heavens with stars made haste to spell

The meaning of the message that, till then,

It was not in my power to understand.