Recollections Of Love

I.

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.

II.

Eight springs have flown, since last I lay

    On sea-ward Quantock's heathy hills,

    Where quiet sounds from hidden rills

Float hear and there, like things astray,

    And high o'er head the sky-lark shrills.

III.

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?

    Belovéd! flew your spirit by?

IV.

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.

V.

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!

VI.

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.

Sibylline Leaves II: Love Poems.