I WHO all the winter through Cherished other loves than you, And kept hands with hoary policy in marriage-bed and pew; Now I know the false and true, For the earnest sun looks through, And my old love comes to meet me in the dawning and the dew.
Now the hedged meads renew Rustic odour, smiling hue, And the clean air shines and tinkles as the world goes wheeling through; And my heart springs up anew, Bright and confident and true, And my old love comes to meet me in the dawning and the dew.
LOVE—what is love? A great and aching heart; Wrung hands; and silence; and a long despair. Life—what is life? Upon a moorland bare To see love coming and see love depart.
SOON our friends perish, Soon all we cherish Fades as days darken—goes as flowers go. Soon in December Over an ember, Lonely we hearken, as loud winds blow.
AS ONE WHO HAVING WANDERED ALL NIGHT LONG
AS one who having wandered all night long In a perplexed forest, comes at length In the first hours, about the matin song, And when the sun uprises in his strength, To the fringed margin of the wood, and sees, Gazing afar before him, many a mile Of falling country, many fields and trees, And cities and bright streams and far-off Ocean’s smile:
I, O Melampus, halting, stand at gaze: I, liberated, look abroad on life, Love, and distress, and dusty travelling ways, The steersman’s helm, the surgeon’s helpful knife, On the lone ploughman’s earth-upturning share, The revelry of cities and the sound Of seas, and mountain-tops aloof in air, And of the circling earth the unsupported round:
I, looking, wonder: I, intent, adore; And, O Melampus, reaching forth my hands In adoration, cry aloud and soar In spirit, high above the supine lands And the low caves of mortal things, and flee To the last fields of the universe untrod, Where is no man, nor any earth, nor sea, And the contented soul is all alone with God.
STRANGE are the ways of men, And strange the ways of God! We tread the mazy paths That all our fathers trod.
We tread them undismayed, And undismayed behold The portents of the sky, The things that were of old.
The fiery stars pursue Their course in heav’n on high; And round the ‘leaguered town, Crest-tossing heroes cry.
Crest-tossing heroes cry; And martial fifes declare How small, to mortal minds, Is merely mortal care.