11
Well, well, said Hewson, resuming;
Laugh if you please at my novel economy; listen to this, though;
As for myself, and apart from economy wholly, believe me,
Never I properly felt the relation of man to woman,
Though to the dancing-master I went, perforce, for a quarter,
Where, in dismal quadrille, were good-looking girls in plenty,
Though, too, school-girl cousins were mine—a bevy of beauties,—
Never (of course you will laugh, but of course all the same I shall say it,)
Never, believe me, revealed itself to me the sexual glory,
Till in some village fields in holidays now getting stupid,
One day sauntering “long and listless,’ as Tennyson has it,
Long and listless strolling, ungainly in hobbadiboyhood,
Chanced it my eye fell aside on a capless, bonnetless maiden,
Bending with three-pronged fork in a garden uprooting potatoes.
Was it the air? who can say? or herself, or the charm of the labour?
But a new thing was in me; and longing delicious possessed me,
Longing to take her and lift her, and put her away from her slaving:
Was it to clasp her in lifting, or was it to lift her by clasping,
Was it embracing or aiding was most in my mind; hard question!
But a new thing was in me, I too was a youth among maidens:
Was it the air, who can say? but in part 'twas the charm of the labour.
I was too awkward, too shy, a great deal, be assured, for advances,
Shyly I shambled away, stopping oft, but afraid of returning,
Shambled obliquely away, with furtive occasional sidelook,
Long, though listless no more, in my awkward hobbadiboyhood.
Still, though a new thing was in me, though vernal emotion, the secret,
Yes, amid prurient talk, the unimparted mysterious secret
Long, the growing distress, and celled-up dishonour of boyhood,
Recognised now took its place, a relation, oh bliss' unto others;
Though now the poets, whom love is the key to, revealed themselves to me,
And in my dreams by Miranda, her Ferdinand, sat I unwearied,
Though all the fuss about girls, the giggling, and toying, and coying,
Were not so strange as they had been, so incomprehensible purely;
Still, as before, (and as now) balls, dances, and evening parties,
Shooting with bows, going shopping together, and hearing them singing,
Dangling beside them, and turning the leaves on the dreary piano,
Offering unneeded arms, performing dull farces of escort,
Seemed like a sort of unnatural up-in-the-air balloon-work,
(Or what to me is as hateful, a riding about in a carriage,)
Utter divorcement from work, mother earth, and objects of living,
