hat feelings Rose had with regard to me, and
therefore I began to seek her company, and to engage her in more
constant conversation than we had hitherto enjoyed. And the effect of
this was that my love for her, which had until then been of a placid
nature, now became restless and unsatisfied, and longed to know whether
it was to be answered with love or finally dismissed.

Thus I became somewhat moody and taciturn, and took to wandering about
the land by myself, by day or night, so that Sir Thurstan more than
once asked me if I had turned poet or fallen in love. Now, both these
things were true, for because I had fallen in love I had also turned
poet; as, I suppose, every lover must. In sooth, I had scribbled lines
and couplets, and here and there a song, to my sweet mistress, though I
had never as yet mustered sufficient courage to show her what I had
written. That, I think, is the way with all lovers who make rhymes.
There is a satisfaction to them in the mere writing of them; and I doubt
not that they often read over their verses, and in the reading find a
certain keen and peculiar sort of pleasure which is not altogether
unmixed with pain.

Now it chanced that one day in the early spring of 1578 I had been
wandering about the park of Beechcot, thinking of my passion and its
object, and my thoughts as usual had clothed themselves in verses.
Wherefore, when I again reached the house, I went into the library and
wrote down my rhymes on paper, in order that I might put them away with
my other compositions. I will write them down here from the copy I then
made. It lies before me now, a yellow, time-stained sheet, and somehow
it brings back to me the long-dead days of happiness which came before
my wonderful adventure.

TO ROSE.

When I first beheld thee, dear,
Day across the land was breaking,
April skies were fine and clear
And the world to life was waking;
All was fair
In earth and air:
Spring lay lurking in the sedges:
Suddenly
I looked on thee
And straight forgot the budding hedges.

When I first beheld thee, sweet,
Madcap Love came gayly flying
Where the woods and meadows meet:
Then I straightway fell a-sighing.
Fair, I said,
Are hills and glade
And sweet the light with which they're laden,
But ah, to me,
Nor flower nor tree
Are half so sweet as yond