RECOLLECTIONS OF LOVE

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 sea-ward Quantock's heathy hills,

Where quiet sounds from hidden rills

Float here and there, like things astray,

And high o'er head 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.