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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=359161" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Angel In The House. Book I. Canto VIII.</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Preludes.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I Life of Life <br>What's that, which, ere I spake, was gone:<br>So joyful and intense a spark<br>That, whilst o'erhead the wonder shone,<br>The day, before but dull, grew dark?<br>I do not know; but this I know,<br>That, had the splendour lived a year,<br>The truth that I some heavenly show<br>Did see, could not be now more clear.<br>This know I too: might mortal breath<br>Express the passion then inspired,<br>Evil would die a natural death,<br>And nothing transient be desired;<br>And error from the soul would pass,<br>And leave the senses pure and strong<br>As sunbeams. But the best, alas,<br>Has neither memory nor tongue.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>II The Revelation <br>An idle poet, here and there,<br>Looks round him; but, for all the rest,<br>The world, unfathomably fair,<br>Is duller than a witling's jest.<br>Love wakes men, once a lifetime each;<br>They lift their heavy lids, and look;<br>And, lo, what one sweet page can teach,<br>They read with joy, then shut the book.<br>And some give thanks, and some blaspheme<br>And most forget; but, either way,<br>That and the Child's unheeded dream<br>Is all the light of all their day.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">III The Spirit's Epochs <br>Not in the crises of events,<br>Of compass'd hopes, or fears fulfill'd,<br>Or acts of gravest consequence,<br>Are life's delight and depth reveal'd.<br>The day of days was not the day;<br>That went before, or was postponed;<br>The night Death took our lamp away<br>Was not the night on which we groan'd.<br>I drew my bride, beneath the moon,<br>Across my threshold; happy hour!<br>But, ah, the walk that afternoon<br>We saw the water-flags in flower!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>IV The Prototype <br>Lo, there, whence love, life, light are pour'd,<br>Veil'd with impenetrable rays,<br>Amidst the presence of the Lord<br>Co-equal Wisdom laughs and plays.<br>Female and male God made the man;<br>His image is the whole, not half;<br>And in our love we dimly scan<br>The love which is between Himself.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">V The Praise of Love <br>Spirit of Knowledge, grant me this:<br>A simple heart and subtle wit<br>To praise the thing whose praise it is<br>That all which can be praised is it.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Sarum Plain.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I<br>Breakfast enjoy'd, 'mid hush of boughs<br>And perfumes thro' the windows blown;<br>Brief worship done, which still endows<br>The day with beauty not its own;<br>With intervening pause, that paints<br>Each act with honour, life with calm<br>(As old processions of the Saints<br>At every step have wands of palm), <br>We rose; the ladies went to dress,<br>And soon return'd with smiles; and then,<br>Plans fix'd, to which the Dean said ‘Yes,’<br>Once more we drove to Salisbury Plain.<br>We past my house (observed with praise<br>By Mildred, Mary acquiesced),<br>And left the old and lazy grays<br>Below the hill, and walk'd the rest.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">II<br>The moods of love are like the wind,<br>And none knows whence or why they rise:<br>I ne'er before felt heart and mind<br>So much affected through mine eyes.<br>How cognate with the flatter'd air,<br>How form'd for earth's familiar zone,<br>She moved; how feeling and how fair<br>For others' pleasure and her own!<br>And, ah, the heaven of her face!<br>How, when she laugh'd, I seem'd to see<br>The gladness of the primal grace,<br>And how, when grave, its dignity!<br>Of all she was, the least not less<br>Delighted the devoted eye;<br>No fold or fashion of her dress<br>Her fairness did not sanctify.<br>I could not else than grieve. What cause?<br>Was I not blest? Was she not there?<br>Likely my own? Ah, that it was:<br>How like seem'd ‘likely’ to despair!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">III<br>And yet to see her so benign,<br>So honourable and womanly,<br>In every maiden kindness mine,<br>And full of gayest courtesy, <br>Was pleasure so without alloy,<br>Such unreproved, sufficient bliss,<br>I almost wish'd, the while, that joy<br>Might never further go than this.<br>So much it was as now to walk,<br>And humbly by her gentle side<br>Observe her smile and hear her talk,<br>Could it be more to call her Bride?<br>I feign'd her won; the mind finite,<br>Puzzled and fagg'd by stress and strain<br>To comprehend the whole delight,<br>Made bliss more hard to bear than pain.<br>All good, save heart to hold, so summ'd<br>And grasp'd, the thought smote, like a knife,<br>How laps'd mortality had numb'd<br>The feelings to the feast of life;<br>How passing good breathes sweetest breath;<br>And love itself at highest reveals<br>More black than bright, commending death<br>By teaching how much life conceals.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">IV<br>But happier passions these subdued,<br>When from the close and sultry lane,<br>With eyes made bright by what they view'd,<br>We emerged upon the mounded Plain.<br>As to the breeze a flag unfurls,<br>My spirit expanded, sweetly embraced<br>By those same gusts that shook her curls<br>And vex'd the ribbon at her waist.<br>To the future cast I future cares;<br>Breathed with a heart unfreighted, free,<br>And laugh'd at the presumptuous airs<br>That with her muslins folded me;<br>Till, one vague rack along my sky,<br>The thought that she might ne'er be mine <br>Lay half forgotten by the eye<br>So feasted with the sun's warm shine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">V<br>By the great stones we chose our ground<br>For shade; and there, in converse sweet,<br>Took luncheon. On a little mound<br>Sat the three ladies; at their feet<br>I sat; and smelt the heathy smell,<br>Pluck'd harebells, turn'd the telescope<br>To the country round. My life went well,<br>For once, without the wheels of hope;<br>And I despised the Druid rocks<br>That scowl'd their chill gloom from above,<br>Like churls whose stolid wisdom mocks<br>The lightness of immortal love.<br>And, as we talk'd, my spirit quaff'd<br>The sparkling winds; the candid skies<br>At our untruthful strangeness laugh'd;<br>I kiss'd with mine her smiling eyes;<br>And sweet familiarness and awe<br>Prevail'd that hour on either part,<br>And in the eternal light I saw<br>That she was mine; though yet my heart<br>Could not conceive, nor would confess<br>Such contentation; and there grew<br>More form and more fair stateliness<br>Than heretofore between us two.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Coventry+Patmore">Coventry Patmore</a><div class=q>
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I Life of Life 
What's that, which, ere I spake, was gone:
So joyful and intense a spark
That, whilst o'erhead the wonder shone,
The day, before but dull, grew dark?
I do not know; but this I know,
That, had the splendour lived a year,
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