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36.

We stoop and look in through the grate,
See the little porch and rustic door,
Read duly the dead builder's date,

Then cross the bridge we crossed before, Take the path again - but wait!

37.

Oh moment, one and infinite!

The water slips o'er stock and stone; The west is tender, hardly bright.

How gray at once is the evening grownOne star, the chrysolite !

38.

We two stood there with never a third,
But each by each, as each knew well.
The sights we saw and the sounds we heard,
The lights and the shades made up a spell
Till the trouble grew and stirred.

39.

Oh, the little more, and how much it is! And the little less, and what worlds away How a sound shall quicken content to bliss,

Or a breath suspend the blood's best play, And life be a proof of this!

40.

Had she willed it, still had stood the screen
So slight, so sure, 'twixt my love and her.
I could fix her face with a guard between,
And find her soul as when friends confer,
Friends lovers that might have been.

41.

For my heart had a touch of the woodland time,
Wanting to sleep now over its best.

Shake the whole tree in the summer-prime,
But bring to the last leaf no such test.
"Hold the last fast!" says the rhyme.

42.

For a chance to make your little much,
To gain a lover and lose a friend,
Venture the tree and a myriad such,

When nothing you mar but the year can mend ! But a last leaf- fear to touch.

43.

Yet should it unfasten itself and fall
Eddying down till it find your face

At some slight wind― (best chance of all!)
Be your heart henceforth its dwelling-place
You trembled to forestall!

44.

Worth how well, those dark gray eyes,

That hair so dark and dear, how worth That a man should strive and agonize,

And taste a very hell on earth

For the hope of such a prize!

45.

Oh, you might have turned and tried a man,
Set him a space to weary and wear,
And prove which suited more your plan,
His best of hope or his worst despair,
Yet end as he began.

46.

But you spared me this, like the heart you are,
And filled my empty heart at a word.

If you join two lives, there is oft a scar,
They are one and one, with a shadowy third;
One near one is too far.

47.

A moment after, and hands unseen

Were hanging the night around us fast.
But we knew that a bar was broken between
Life and life; we were mixed at last
In spite of the mortal screen.

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We caught for a second the powers at play: They had mingled us so, for once and for good, Their work was done — we might go or stay, They relapsed to their ancient mood.

49.

How the world is made for each of us!
How all we perceive and know in it
Tends to some moment's product thus,
When a soul declares itself- to wit,

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the thing it does!

50.

Be Hate that fruit or Love that fruit,
It forwards the General Deed of Man,
And each of the Many helps to recruit
The life of the race by a general plan,
Each living his own, to boot.

51.

I am named and known by that hour's feat.
There took my station and degree.

So grew my own small life complete

As nature obtained her best of me

One born to love you, sweet!

52.

And to watch you sink by the fireside now
Back again, as you mutely sit
Musing by fire-light, that great brow

And the spirit-small hand propping it
Yonder, my heart knows how!

53.

So the earth has gained by one man more,

And the gain of earth must be Heaven's gain too

And the whole is well worth thinking o'er

When the autumn comes: which I mean to do One day, as I said before.

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