How warm this woodland wild recess! Love surely hath been breathing here; And this sweet bed of heath, my dear! Swells up, then sinks with faint caress, As if to have you yet more near. Eight springs have flown since last I lay On seaward Quantock's heathy hills, Where quiet sounds form hidden rills Float here and there, like things astray, And high o'erhead the sky-lark shrills. No voice as yet had made the air Be music with your name; yet why That asking look? that yearning sigh? That sense of promise every where? Beloved! flew your spirit by? As when a mother doth explore The rose mark on her long-lost child, I met, I loved you, maiden mild! As whom I long had loved before -- So deeply had I been beguiled. You stood before me like a thought, A dream remembered in a dream. But when those meek eyes first did seem To tell me, Love within you wrought -- O Greta, dear domestic stream! Has not, since then, Love's prompture deep, Has not, Love's whisper evermore Been ceaseless, as thy gentle roar? Sole voice, when other voices sleep, Dear under-song in clamor's hour. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...DOMESDAY BOOK: HENRY BAKER, AT NEW YORK by EDGAR LEE MASTERS COUNSEIL TO A BACHELER by MARIANNE MOORE AND THEY OBEY by CARL SANDBURG WHERE SHALL I DIE? by MARIA ABDY MARY MAGDALEN by BARTOLOME LEONARDO DE ARGENSOLA LINES WRITTEN BY A DEATH-BED by MATTHEW ARNOLD SPRING SONG by JEAN ANTOINE DE BAIF |