noon
In respect of them , the lovely simile , in Christabel , of the parted cliffs , may be carried a little farther , for , under the dreary sea flowing between them , the rock was one still . Such a faith may sometimes , perhaps often does , lie in the heart like a seed buried beyond the reach of the sun , thoroughly alive though giving no sign : to grow too soon might be to die . Things had indeed gone farther with Dorothy and Richard , but the lobes of their loves had never been fairly exposed to the sun and wind ere the swollen clods of winter again covered them . Once , in the cold noon of a lovely day of frost , when the lightest step crackled with the breaking of multitudinous crystals , when the trees were fringed with furry white , and the old spider-webs glimmered like filigrane of fairy silver , they met on a lonely country-road . The sun shone red through depths of half-frozen vapour , and tinged the whiteness of death with a faint warmth of feeling and hope . Along the rough lane Richard walked reading what looked like a letter , but was a copy his father had procured of a poem still only in manuscript -- the Lycidas of Milton . In the glow to which the alternating hot and cold winds of enthusiasm and bereavement had fanned the fiery particle within him , Richard was not only able to understand and enjoy the thought of which the poem was built , but was borne aloft on its sad yet hopeful melodies as upon wings of an upsoaring seraph .