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Coventry Patmore - The Angel In The House. Book I. Canto I.
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Preludes.

I The Impossibility 
              Lo, Love`s obey`d by all. `Tis right
              That all should know what they obey,
              Lest erring conscience damp delight,
              And folly laugh our joys away.
              Thou Primal Love, who grantest wings
              And voices to the woodland birds,
              Grant me the power of saying things
              Too simple and too sweet for words!

II Love`s Reality 
              I walk, I trust, with open eyes;
               I`ve travell`d half my worldly course;
               And in the way behind me lies
               Much vanity and some remorse;
               I`ve lived to feel how pride may part
               Spirits, tho` match`d like hand and glove;
               I`ve blush`d for love`s abode, the heart;
               But have not disbelieved in love;   
               Nor unto love, sole mortal thing
               Of worth immortal, done the wrong
               To count it, with the rest that sing,
               Unworthy of a serious song;
               And love is my reward; for now,
               When most of dead`ning time complain,
               The myrtle blooms upon my brow,
               Its odour quickens all my brain.

III The Poet`s Confidence 
               The richest realm of all the earth
               Is counted still a heathen land:
               Lo, I, like Joshua, now go forth
               To give it into Israel`s hand.
               I will not hearken blame or praise;
               For so should I dishonour do
               To that sweet Power by which these Lays
               Alone are lovely, good, and true;
               Nor credence to the world`s cries give,
               Which ever preach and still prevent
               Pure passion`s high prerogative
               To make, not follow, precedent.
               From love`s abysmal ether rare
               If I to men have here made known
               New truths, they, like new stars, were there
               Before, though not yet written down.
               Moving but as the feelings move,
               I run, or loiter with delight,
               Or pause to mark where gentle Love
               Persuades the soul from height to height,
               Yet, know ye, though my words are gay
               As David`s dance, which Michal scorn`d,
               If kindly you receive the Lay,
               You shall be sweetly help`d and warn`d.


The Cathedral Close.

I
               Once more I came to Sarum Close,
               With joy half memory, half desire,
               And breathed the sunny wind that rose
               And blew the shadows o`er the Spire,
               And toss`d the lilac`s scented plumes,
               And sway`d the chestnut`s thousand cones,
               And fill`d my nostrils with perfumes,
               And shaped the clouds in waifs and zones,
               And wafted down the serious strain
               Of Sarum bells, when, true to time,
               I reach`d the Dean`s, with heart and brain
               That trembled to the trembling chime.

II
               `Twas half my home, six years ago.
               The six years had not alter`d it:
               Red-brick and ashlar, long and low,
               With dormers and with oriels lit.
               Geranium, lychnis, rose array`d
               The windows, all wide open thrown;
               And some one in the Study play`d
               The Wedding-March of Mendelssohn.
               And there it was I last took leave:
               `Twas Christmas: I remember`d now
               The cruel girls, who feign`d to grieve,
               Took down the evergreens; and how
               The holly into blazes woke
               The fire, lighting the large, low room
               A dim, rich lustre of old oak
               And crimson velvet`s glowing gloom.

   
III
               No change had touch`d Dean Churchill: kind,
               By widowhood more than winters bent,
               And settled in a cheerful mind,
               As still forecasting heaven`s content.
               Well might his thoughts be fix`d on high,
               Now she was there! Within her face
               Humility and dignity
               Were met in a most sweet embrace.
               She seem`d expressly sent below
               To teach our erring minds to see
               The rhythmic change of time`s swift flow
               As part of still eternity.
               Her life, all honour, observed, with awe
               Which cross experience could not mar,
               The fiction of the Christian law
               That all men honourable are;
               And so her smile at once conferr`d
               High flattery and benign reproof;
               And I, a rude boy, strangely stirr`d,
               Grew courtly in my own behoof.
               The years, so far from doing her wrong,
               Anointed her with gracious balm,
               And made her brows more and more young
                With wreaths of amaranth and palm.

IV
                Was this her eldest, Honor; prude,
                Who would not let me pull the swing;
                Who, kiss`d at Christmas, call`d me rude,
                And, sobbing low, refused to sing?
                How changed! In shape no slender Grace,
                But Venus; milder than the dove;
                Her mother`s air; her Norman face;
                Her large sweet eyes, clear lakes of love.    
                Mary I knew. In former time
                Ailing and pale, she thought that bliss
                Was only for a better clime,
                And, heavenly overmuch, scorn`d this.
                I, rash with theories of the right,
                Which stretch`d the tether of my Creed,
                But did not break it, held delight
                Half discipline. We disagreed.
                She told the Dean I wanted grace.
                Now she was kindest of the three,
                And soft wild roses deck`d her face.
                And, what, was this my Mildred, she
                To herself and all a sweet surprise?
                My Pet, who romp`d and roll`d a hoop?
                I wonder`d where those daisy eyes
                Had found their touching curve and droop.

V 
                Unmannerly times! But now we sat
                Stranger than strangers; till I caught
                And answer`d Mildred`s smile; and that
                Spread to the rest, and freedom brought.
                The Dean talk`d little, looking on,
                Of three such daughters justly vain.
                What letters they had had from Bonn,
                Said Mildred, and what plums from Spain!
                By Honor I was kindly task`d
                To excuse my never coming down
                From Cambridge; Mary smiled and ask`d
                Were Kant and Goethe yet outgrown?
                And, pleased, we talk`d the old days o`er;
                And, parting, I for pleasure sigh`d.
                To be there as a friend, (since more),
                Seem`d then, seems still, excuse for pride;
                For something that abode endued
                With temple-like repose, an air    
                Of life`s kind purposes pursued
                With order`d freedom sweet and fair.
                A tent pitch`d in a world not right
                It seem`d, whose inmates, every one,
                On tranquil faces bore the light
                Of duties beautifully done,
                And humbly, though they had few peers,
                Kept their own laws, which seem`d to be
                The fair sum of six thousand years`
                Traditions of civility.
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