Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,

Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregory's wood and one bare hill

Two lovers by a moss-grown spring:
They leaned soft cheeks together there,
Mingled the dark and sunny hair,
And heard the wooing thrushes sing.

This exciting next chapter of Hannah’s script, Return to Avonlea, brings both closure and romance to the lives of certain members of the King Family.  Here is "The Opening of Hearts and Minds".

Somewhere on the other side of this wide night
and the distance between us, I am thinking of you.
The room is turning slowly away from the moon.

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;

Going to Mass last Sunday my true love passed me by,
I knew her mind was altered by the rolling of her eye;
And when I stood in God’s dark light my tongue could word no prayer
Knowing my saint had fled and left her reliquary bare.

How can I keep my soul in me, so that
it doesn't touch your soul? How can I raise
it high enough, past you, to other things?

Oh my luve is like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June:
Oh my luve is like the melodie,
That's sweetly play'd in tune.

Yesterday, we took a look at some of the hardships that author L.M. Montgomery endured during her marriage to minister Ewen Macdonald.  In light of her difficulties, it is interesting to consider the wisdom that Maud acquired when she studied the marriages of others as well.