Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, FROM INLAND, by FORD MADOX FORD


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

FROM INLAND, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: I dreamed that you and I were young
Last Line: That fled so bravely to its death.
Alternate Author Name(s): Hueffer, Ford Hermann; Hueffer, Ford Madox
Subject(s): Old Age; Past; Relationships; Youth


I DREAMED that you and I were young
Once more, and by our old grey sea
Raced in the wind; but matins, sung
High on these vineyards, wakened me:
I lay half-roused and seemed to hold
Once more, beside our old grey sea,
Your hand. I saw the primrose gold
Your hair had then, and seemed to see
Your eyes, so childlike and so wise,
Look down on me.

By the last fire we ever lit
You knelt, and bending down your head,
—If you could compass it, you said,
Not ever would you live again
Your vanished life; never again
Pass through those shadowy vales of pain.
"And now I'm old and here I sit!"
You said, and held your hands apart
To those old flames we've left behind
As far—as far as some dead wind. ...
No doubt I fetched from near my heart
Brave platitudes—for you were there;
The firelight lit your brooding face,
Shadowed your golden, glowing hair:
I could be brave for the short space
I had you by my chair. ...
As thus: "Since with the ebb of Youth
Rises the flood of passionless
And calm enjoyment, rises Truth
And fades the painful earnestness
Of all young thought, We two," I said,
"Have still the best to come." But you
Bowed down your brooding, silent head,
Patient and sad and still. ...
This view,
Steep vineyards rising parched and brown,
This weary stream, this cobbled town,
White convents on each hill-top—Dear!
What would I give to climb our down,
Where the wind hisses in each stalk
And, from the high brown crest to see,
Beyond the ancient, sea-grey town,
The sky-line of our foam-flecked sea;
And, looking out to sea, to hear,
Ah! Dear, once more your pleasant talk;
And to go home as twilight falls
Along the old sea-walls!
The best to come! The best! The best!
One says the wildest things at times,
Merely for comfort. But—The best!
Ah! well, at night, when the moon climbs
High o'er these misty inland capes,
And hears the river lisping rhymes,
And sees the roe-deer nibbling grapes
Beneath the evanescent gleams
Of shaken dewdrops, shall come dreams,
Gliding amid the mists beneath:
A dream, maybe, of you and me,
Young once again by our old sea.
But, ah! we two must travel wide
And far and far ere we shall find
That recollected, ancient tide
By which we walked, or that old wind
That fled so bravely to its death.





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