36. We stoop and look in through the grate, 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, 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 41. For my heart had a touch of the woodland time, Shake the whole tree in the summer-prime, 42. For a chance to make your little much, When nothing you mar but the year can mend ! But a last leaf- fear to touch. 43. Yet should it unfasten itself and fall At some slight wind― (best chance of all!) 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, 46. But you spared me this, like the heart you are, If you join two lives, there is oft a scar, 47. A moment after, and hands unseen Were hanging the night around us fast. 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! the thing it does! 50. Be Hate that fruit or Love that fruit, 51. I am named and known by that hour's feat. 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 And the spirit-small hand propping it 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. |