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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

APPREHENSION by AGNES MARY F. ROBINSON

First Line: THE HILLS COME DOWN ON EVERY SIDE
Last Line: HOW BOTTOMLESS YAWNS BENEATH THE BOILING SEA!
I.

THE hills come down on every side,
The marsh lies green below,
The green, green valley is long and wide,
Where the grass grows thick with the rush beside,
And the white sheep come and go.

Down in the marsh it is green and still;
You may linger all the day,
Till a shadow slants from a western hill,
And the colour goes out of the flowers in the rill,
And the sheep look ghostly gray.

And never a change in the great green flat
Till the change of night, my friend.
O wide green valley where we two sat,
How I wished that our lives were as peaceful as that,
And seen from end to end!

II.

O foolish dream, to hope that such as I
Who answer only to thine easiest moods,
Should fill thy heart, as o'er my heart there broods
The perfect fulness of thy memory!
I flit across thy soul as white birds fly
Across the untrodden desert solitudes:
A moment's flash of wings; fair interludes
That leave unchanged the eternal sand and sky.

Even such to thee am I; but thou to me
As the embracing shore to the sobbing sea,
Even as the sea itself to the stone-tossed rill.
But who, but who shall give such rest to thee?
The deep mid-ocean waves perpetually
Call to the land, and call unanswered still.

III.

As dreams the fasting nun of Paradise,
And finds her gnawing hunger pass away
In thinking of the happy bridal day
That soon shall dawn upon her watching eyes;
So, dreaming of your love, do I despise
Harshness or death of friends, doubt, slow decay,
Madness, -- all dreads that fills me with dismay
And creep about me oft with fell surmise.

For you are true, and all I hoped you are,
O perfect answer to my calling heart!
And very sweet my life is, having thee.
Yet must I dread the dim end shrouded far;
Yet must I dream: should once the good planks start,
How bottomless yawns beneath the boiling sea!



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