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.
1807(?), published 1817, 1828, 1829, 1834.
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