-dressers' low shed,
Leave the grange where the woodman stores his nuts,
Or the wattled cote where the fowlers spread
Their gear on the rock's bare juts.

18.

It has some pretension too, this front,
With its bit of fresco half-moon-wise
Set over the porch, Art's early wont:
'Tis John in the Desert, I surmise,
But has borne the weather's brunt--

19.

Not from the fault of the builder, though,
For a pent-house properly projects
Where three carved beams make a certain show,
Dating--good thought of our architect's--
'Five, six, nine, he lets you know.

20.

And all day long a bird sings there,
And a stray sheep drinks at the pond at times;
The place is silent and aware;
It has had its scenes, its joys and crimes,
But that is its own affair.

--
St. 20. aware: self-conscious.

". . .in green ruins, in the desolate walls
Of antique palaces, where Man hath been,
* * * * *
There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone."
--Hood's `Sonnet on Silence'.

21.

My perfect wife, my Leonor,
O heart, my own, Oh eyes, mine too,
Whom else could I dare look backward for,
With whom beside should I dare pursue
The path gray heads abhor?

--
St. 21. He digresses here, and does not return to the subject till
the 31st stanza, "What did I say?--that a small bird sings".
The path gray heads abhor: this verse and the following stanza are,
with most readers, the CRUX of the poem; "gray heads" must be
understood with some restriction: many gray heads, not all, abhor
--gray heads who went along through their flowery youth
as if it had no limit, and without insuring, in Love's true season,
the happiness of their lives beyond youth's limit, "life's safe hem",
which to cross without such insurance, is often fatal. And these,
when they reach old age, shun retracing the path which led to
the gulf wherein their youth dropped.

22.

For it leads to a crag's sheer edge with them;
Youth, flowery all the way, there stops--
Not they; age threatens and they contemn,
Till they reach the gulf wherein youth drops,
One inch from our life's safe hem!

23.

With me, youth led. . .I will speak now,
No longer wat