twelve o'clock
`` Nay , but he aften goes to th ' Common . Thee know ` st more o 's goings nor I do . '' Adam wanted to go and meet Seth , but he must content himself with walking about the near fields and getting sight of him as soon as possible . That would not be for more than an hour to come , for Seth would scarcely be at home much before their dinner-time , which was twelve o'clock . But Adam could not sit down to his reading again , and he sauntered along by the brook and stood leaning against the stiles , with eager intense eyes , which looked as if they saw something very vividly ; but it was not the brook or the willows , not the fields or the sky . Again and again his vision was interrupted by wonder at the strength of his own feeling , at the strength and sweetness of this new love -- almost like the wonder a man feels at the added power he finds in himself for an art which he had laid aside for a space . How is it that the poets have said so many fine things about our first love , so few about our later love ?