Page:The poems of George Eliot (Crowell, 1884).djvu/430

 Unknowing how the good I loved was wrought,

Untroubled by the fear that it would cease.

Slowly the barges floated into view,

Hounding a grassy hill to me sublime

With some Unknown beyond it, whither flew

The parting cuckoo toward a fresh spring-time.

The wide-arched bridge, the scented elder-flowers,

The wondrous watery rings that died too soon,

The echoes of the quarry, the still hours

With white robe sweeping on the shadeless noon,

Were but my growing self, are part of me,

My present Past, my root of piety.

VII.

Those long days measured by my little feet

Had chronicles which yield me many a text;

Where irony still finds an image meet

Of full-grown judgments in this world perplext.

One day my brother left me in high charge,

To mind the rod, while he went seeking bait,

And bade me, when I saw a nearing barge,

Snatch out the line, lest he should come too late.

Proud of the task, I watched with all my might

For one whole minute, till my eyes grew wide,

Till sky and earth took on a strange new light

And seemed a dream-world floating on some tide

A fair pavilioned boat for me alone

Bearing me onward through the vast unknown.