And here it was but natural that laughter and kisses should once more
interrupt--

'Those strange blue jewels of your eyes,
Painting the lily of your face,
What goldsmith set them in their place--
Forget-me-nots of Paradise?

'And that blest river of your voice,
Whose merry silver stirs the rest
Of water-lilies in your breast ...'

At last, in spite of more interruptions, the poem came to an
end--whereupon, of course, the poet immediately read it through once
more from the beginning, its personal and emotional elements, he felt,
having been done more justice on a first reading than its artistic
excellences.

'Why, darling, it is splendid,' was his little sweetheart's comment;
'you know how happy it makes me to think it was written for me, don't
you?' And she took his hands and looked up at him with eyes like the
morning sky.

Romance in poetry is almost exclusively associated with very refined
ethereal matters, stars and flowers and such like--happily, in actual
life it is often associated with much humbler objects. Lovers, like
children, can make their paradises out of the quaintest materials.
Indeed, our paradises, if we only knew, are always cheap enough; it is
our hells that are so expensive. Now these lovers--like, if I mistake