’Twas beautiful with her to be a man.

Two years elapsed, and he who went and came,

Changing in much, in this appeared the same;

The feeling, if it did not greatly grow,

Endured and was not wholly hid below.

He now, o’ertasked at school, a serious boy,

A sort of after-boyhood to enjoy

Appeared—in vigour and in spirit high

And manly grown, but kept the boy’s soft eye:

And full of blood, and strong and lithe of limb,