Ditty

(E. L G.)     Beneath a knap where flown     Nestlings play,     Within walls of weathered stone,     Far away     From the files of formal houses,     By the bough the firstling browses,     Lives a Sweet: no merchants meet,     No man barters, no man sells     Where she dwells.     Upon that fabric fair     "Here is she!"     Seems written everywhere     Unto me.     But to friends and nodding neighbours,     Fellow-wights in lot and labours,     Who descry the times as I,     No such lucid legend tells     Where she dwells.     Should I lapse to what I was     Ere we met;     (Such can not be, but because     Some forget     Let me feign it) none would notice     That where she I know by rote is     Spread a strange and withering change,     Like a drying of the wells     Where she dwells.     To feel I might have kissed -     Loved as true -     Otherwhere, nor Mine have missed     My life through.     Had I never wandered near her,     Is a smart severe severer     In the thought that she is nought,     Even as I, beyond the dells     Where she dwells.     And Devotion droops her glance     To recall     What bond-servants of Chance     We are all.     I but found her in that, going     On my errant path unknowing,     I did not out-skirt the spot     That no spot on earth excels,      Where she dwells!     1870.