ON the terrace lies the sunlight, fretted with the shade
Of the wilding apple-orchard Wordsworth made.

Sunlight falls upon the aspen, and the cedar glows
Like the laurel or the climbing Christmas rose.

Through green-golden vistas downward if your glances fall,
Hardly would you guess the cottage there at all.

Bines of bryony and bramble overhang the green
Of the crowding scarlet-runner and the bean.

But I mark one quiet casement, ivy-covered still.
There he sat, I think, and loved this little hill;

Loved the rocky stair that led him upward to the seat
Coleridge fashioned; loved the fragrant, high retreat

In the wood above the garden. There he walked, and there
In his heart the beauty gathered to a prayer.

In the sunshine by the cottage doorway I can see,
In among her Christmas roses, Dorothy.

Deeper joy and truer service, fuller draught of life,
Came I doubt not to the sister, and the wife.

Laurel, it may be, too early on his brow he set,
And the thorn of life too lightly could forget.

Dorothy, wild heart and woman, chose the better way,
Met the world with love and service every day.

Love for life and life for loving, and the poet's part
Is to love his life and, living, love his art.

But the shadow from the fellside falls, and all the scene
Melts and runs, green-gold to slumbrous golden-green.

Showers of golden light on Grasmere tremble into shade,
While the garden grasses gather blade with blade;

And one patient robin-redbreast, waiting, waiting long,
Seals the twilight in the garden with a song.