This text comes from Wessex Poems and Other Verses, a historical songbook transcribed on Wikisource and reproduced from the pinned revision linked below.
AT A BRIDAL
To——
WHEN you paced forth, to wait maternity,
A dream of other offspring held my mind.
Compounded of us twain as Love designed;
Rare forms, that corporate now will never be!
Should I, too, wed as slave to Mode's decree,
And each thus found apart, of false desire,
A stolid line, whom no high aims will fire
As had fired ours could ever have mingled we:
And, grieved that lives so matched should miscompose,
Each mourn the double waste; and question dare
To the Great Dame whence incarnation flows,
Why those high-purposed children never were:
What will she answer? That she does not care
If the race all such sovereign types unknows.
1866.