“Or when the works of time shall reach
The goal to which they tend,
And knowledge, being perfect, shall
At last in wisdom end—
That wisdom to end knowledge—or
Some change comes, yet unkenn’d;
“It perhaps may be again, that men,
Like orange plants, will bear,
At once, the many fine effects
To which God made them heir—
Large souls, large forms, and love like that
Between this childish pair.
“Two summers pass’d away, and then—
Though yet young Merton’s eyes,
Wide with their language, spake of youth’s
Habitual surprise—
He felt that pleasures such as these
No longer could suffice.”
What the meaning of the three stanzas beginning with—
“It may have been in the ancient time,”
may be, we are utterly at a loss to conjecture. We seek in vain to invest them with a shadow of sense. Perhaps they are thrown in to redeem, by their profound unintelligibility, the shallow trifling of the rest of the poem. But it was not enough for young Merton that the girl accepted the fruits which he offered to her in a sullen tone. He had now reached the age so naturally and lucidly described as the period of life when the “eyes, wide with their language, speak of youth’s habitual surprise,” and he began to seek “new joys from books,” communicating the results of his studies to Maud, whose turn it now was to be surprised.
“So when to-morrow came, while Maud
Stood listening with surprise,
He told the tale learnt over night,
And, if he met her eyes,
Perhaps said how far the stars were, and
Talk’d on about the skies.”
The effect of these lucid revelations upon the mind of Maud was very overpowering.
“She wept for joy if the cushat sang
Its low song in the fir;
The cat, perhaps, broke the quiet with
Its regular slow purr;
’Twas music now, and her wheel gave forth
A rhythm in its whirr.
“She once had read, When lovers die,
And go where angels are,
Each pair of lover’s souls, perhaps,
Will make a double star;
So stars grew dearer, and she thought
They did not look so far.