Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922.
I. RetirementRichard Chenevix Trench (18071886)
A
Like a throng’d highway or a populous street,
Where every idle thought has leave to meet,
Pause, or pass on, as in an open mart;
Or like a roadside pool, which no nice art
Has guarded that the cattle may not beat
And foul it with a multitude of feet,
Till of the heavens it can give back no part.
But keep thou thine a holy Solitude:
For He, who would walk there, would walk alone;
He who would drink there, must be first endued
With single right to call that stream his own.
Keep thou thine heart close fasten’d, unreveal’d,
A fencèd garden and a fountain seal’d.