And the loved one all together!
This path--how soft to pace!
This May--what magic weather!
Where is the loved one's face?
In a dream that loved one's face meets mine,
But the house is narrow, the place is bleak
Where, outside, rain and wind combine
With a furtive ear, if I try to speak,
With a hostile eye at my flushing cheek,
With a malice that marks each word, each sign!

Never can we have things the way we wish in this world--a beautiful day, a
beautiful place, and the presence of the beloved all at the same time.
Something is always missing; if the place be beautiful, the weather
perhaps is bad. Or if the weather and the place both happen to be perfect,
the woman is absent. So the poet finding himself in some very beautiful
place, and remembering this, remembers also the last time that he met the
woman beloved. It was a small dark house and chilly; outside there was
rain and storm; and the sounds of the wind and of the rain were as the
sounds of people secretly listening, or sounds of people trying to look in
secretly through the windows. Evidently it was necessary that the meeting
should be secret, and it was not altogether as happy as could have been
wished.

The third example is a very beautiful poem; we must content ourselves with
an extract from it. It is the memory of a betrothal day, and the poet is
Frederick Tennyson. I suppose you know that there were three Tennysons,
and although Alfred happened to be the greatest, all of them were good
poets.