This place was formed divine for love and us to dwell; This house of brown stone built for us to sleep therein; Those blossoms haunt the rocks that we should see and smell; Those old rocks break the hill that we the heights should win.
Those heights survey the sea that there our thoughts should sail Up the steep wall of wave to touch the Syrian sky: For us that sky at eve fades out of purple pale, Pale as the mountain mists beneath our house that lie.
In front of our small house are brown stone arches three; Behind it, the low porch where all the jasmine grows; Beyond it, red and green, the gay pomegranate tree; Around it, like love's arms, the summer and the rose.
Within it sat and wrote in minutes soft and few This worst and best of songs, one who loves it, and you.
Had I the power To Midas given of old To touch a flower And leave the petals gold I then might touch thy face, Delightful boy, And leave a metal grace, A graven joy.
Thus would I slay,-- Ah, desperate device! The vital day That trembles in thine eyes, And let the red lips close Which sang so well, And drive away the rose To leave a shell.
Then I myself, Rising austere and dumb On the high shelf Of my half-lighted room, Would place the shining bust And wait alone, Until I was but dust, Buried unknown.
Thus in my love For nations yet unborn, I would remove From our two lives the morn, And muse on loveliness In mine arm-chair, Content should Time confess How sweet you were.
Oh shall I never never be home again? Meadows of England shining in the rain Spread wide your daisied lawns: your ramparts green With briar fortify, with blossom screen Till my far morning--and O streams that slow And pure and deep through plains and playlands go, For me your love and all your kingcups store, And--dark militia of the southern shore, Old fragrant friends--preserve me the last lines Of that long saga which you sung me, pines, When, lonely boy, beneath the chosen tree I listened, with my eyes upon the sea.
O traitor pines, you sang what life has found The falsest of fair tales. Earth blew a far-horn prelude all around, That native music of her forest home, While from the sea's blue fields and syren dales Shadows and light noon-spectres of the foam Riding the summer gales On aery viols plucked an idle sound.