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

Float hear and there, like things astray,    And high o'er head the sky-lark shrills.

II.

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

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.