Stay, stay.
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the evensong;
And, having prayed together, we
Will go with you along.
Yes, I think Herrick would have forgiven me for that momentary lapse into
regretfulness over the white hawthorn. He would have understood. You will
see that he understood if you will recall the second stanza, which, if you
are the person I take you for, you will do without needing to turn to a
book.
It is the same sense of the transience of beauty that inspired the "Ode to
a Grecian Urn" on which pastoral beauty was fixed in eternal rapture:--
Ah, happy, happy boughs I that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the spring adieu.
And there we touch the paradox of this strange life. We would keep the
fleeting beauty of Nature, and yet we would not keep it. The thought of
those trees whose leaves are never shed, and of that eternal spring to
which we never bid adieu, is pleasant to toy with, but after all we would
not have it so. It is no more seriously tenable than the thought that
little Johnny there should remain for ever at the age of ten.
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