rything is fair and young--
As on June eves doth fitly seem:
The Earth herself lies in among
The misty, azure fields of space,
A bride, whose startled blushes glow
Less flame-like through the shrouds of lace
That sweeter all her beauties show.

We walked and talked beneath the trees--
Bird-haunted, flowering trees of June--
The roses purpled in the moon:
We breathed their fragrance on the breeze--
Young Percy's voice is tuned to clear
Deep tones, as if his heart were deep:
This night it fluttered on my ear
As young birds flutter in their sleep.
My own voice faltered when I said
How very sweet such hours must be
With one we love. At that word he
Shook like the aspen overhead:
"Must be!" he drew me from the shade,
To read my face to show his own:
"Say _are_, dear Maud!"--my tongue was stayed;
My pliant limbs seemed turned to stone.

He held my hands I could not move--
The nerveless palms together prest--
And clasped them tightly to his breast;
While in my heart the question strove.
The fire-flies flashed like wandering stars--
I thought some sprang from out his eyes:
Surely some spirit makes or mars
At will our earthly destinies!
"Speak, Maud!"--at length I turned away:
He must have thought it woman's fear;
For, whispering softly in my ear
Such gentle thanks as might allay
Love's tender shame; left on my brow,
And on each hand, a warm light kiss--
I feel them burn there even now--
But all my fetters fell at this.

I spoke like an injured queen:
It's our own defence when we're surprised--
The way our weakness is disguised;
I said things that I could not mean,
Or ought not--since it was a lie
That love had not been in my mind:
'Twas in the air I breathed; the sky
Shone love, and murmured it the wind.
It had absorbed my soul with bliss;
My blood ran love in every vein,
And to have been beloved again
Were heavenly!--so I thought till this
Unlooked for answer to the prayer
My heart was making with its might,
Thus challenged, caught in sudden snare,
Like two clouds meeting on a height,
And, pausing first in short strange lull,
Then bursting into awful storm,
Opposing feelings multiform,
Struggled in silence: and then full
Of our blind woman-wrath, broke forth