concealment, WHAT have I heard?
Worried and wearied, bewilder'd and teaz'd,
I blurt it out and repeat every word!
Harry regards me with almost a stare--
Pulls his moustache with a sort of amaze--
Passes his hand through his clustering hair
And--bursts out laughing, as if it was praise!
There is nothing so sweet or full of grace
(Can one who has seen it ever forget?)
As the smile that comes over Harry's face;
It is Heaven on earth--and yet--and yet--
I feel a strange chill steal into my heart--
Should he permit such remarks from the crowd?
Can it be their part? Can it be his part?
They the mean snobs! he the noble and proud!

No shooting to-day of partridge or snipe;
It has steadily rained since morning broke,
In dancing spirits I kindle his pipe
(I am learning to like the smell of smoke!)

He has given up such a deal for me!
He likes to give up his bachelor way;
He says it is charming _not_ to be free,
So he only smokes one pipe in the day.

Together we sit in his little room,
Which is fitted up like a dainty toy;
And if without there is darkness and gloom,
Within there is plenty of light and joy.

'Tell me of all you have done, if you can,'
I cry, as the pretty smoke lightly curls;
'I want to hear of the life of a man
I, who only know of the life of girls!'

He shakes his head with a smile and a nod,
The smoke curling round it with idle aim;
He is like the picture of some young god,
Who, from painted clouds, looks out of a frame.

'The life of a girl is a fairy thing,
With a sweetness none can wish to forget,
Caught from a snowdrop in earliest spring
Or the first faint breath of a violet;
The life of a man, as it is and was,
Is like autumn leaves decaying and dead,
With a flavour of bad theatrical gas,
And of last night's banquet,' my husband said.

I laugh'd at the gay nonsensical speech,
In my merry pride at being his wife;
I sat at his feet, and I bade him teach
A neophyte out of his noble life.

He mutter'd 'My noble life!' with a frown,
'With noble lives I have little to do;
My dear, put those frivolous notions down,
I am but a man, and a weak one too.
My life has been full of confounded things,
I am only a man, like other men;
But we hear a flutter of angel-wings,
And our demons forsake us, there and then.
In marrying _thee_, my innocent sprite,
I had caught a glimpse of