I said and sang her excellence:
They called it laud undue.
( Have your way, my heart, O! )
Yet what was homage far above
The plain deserts of my olden Love
Proved verity of my new.
“She moves a sylph in picture-land,
Where nothing frosts the air:”
( Have your way, my heart, O! )
“To all winged pipers overhead
She is known by shape and song,” I said,
Conscious of licence there.
I sang of her in a dim old hall
Dream-built too fancifully,
( Have your way, my heart, O! )
But lo, the ripe months chanced to lead
My feet to such a hall indeed,
Where stood the very She.
Strange, startling, was it then to learn
I had glanced down unborn time,
( Have your way, my heart, O! )
And prophesied, whereby I knew
That which the years had planned to do
In warranty of my rhyme.