Wessex Poems and Other Verses: Ditty

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.

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