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.