id="id00146">O, I throw me low down on the ground
   And I bury my face in their death,
And only I rise at the sound
   Of a wind as it scattereth,

As it scattereth sweetly the dried
   Leaves withered and brittle and sere
Of days of old years that have died—
   And, O, it is sweet in my ear

And I rise me and build me a pyre
   Of the whispering skeleton things,
And my heart laugheth low with the fire,
   Laugheth high with the flame as it springs;

And above in the flickering glare
   I mark me the boughs of my tree,
My tree of the years, growing bare.
   Growing bare with the scant days to be.

Then I turn to my beads and I pray
   For the axe at the root of the tree—
Last flower, last bead—ah! last day
   That shall part me, my darling, from thee!

And I pray for the knife on the string
   Of this rosary painful of days:
But who is the Lady I sing?
   Ah, how can I tell thee her praise!

II

I make this rhyme of my lady and me
To give me ease of my misery,
Of my lady and me I make this rhyme
For lovers in the after-time.
And I weave its warp from day to day
In a golden loom deep hid away
In my secret heart, where no one goes
But my lady's self, and—no one knows.

With bended head all day I pore
On a joyless task, and yet before
My eyes all day, through each weary hour,
Breathes my lady's face like a dewy flower.
Like rain it comes through the dusty air,
Like sun on the meadows to think of her;
O sweet as violets in early spring
The flower-girls to the city bring,
O, healing-bright to wintry eyes
As primrose-gold 'neath northern skies—
But O for fit thing to compare
With the joy I have in the thought of her!
So all day long doth her holy face
Bring fragrance to the barren place,
And whensoe'er it comes nearest me,
My loom it weaveth busily.

Some days there be when the loom is still
And my soul is sad as an autumn hill,
But how to tell the blessed time
When my heart is one glowing prayer of rhyme!
Think on the humming afternoon
Within some busy wood in June,
When nettle patches, drunk with the sun,
Are fiery outposts of the shade;
While gnats keep up a dizzy reel,
And the grasshopper, perched upon his blade,
Loud drones his fairy threshing-wheel:—
Hour when some poet-wit might feign
The drowsy tune of the throbbing air
The weaving of the gossamer
In secret nooks of wood and lane—
The gossamer, silk night-robes of the flowers,
Fluttered apart by amorous morning hours.
Yea, as the weaving of the gossamer,
If truly that the mystic golden boom,
Is the strange rapture of my hidden loom,
As I sit in the light of the thought of her;
And it weaveth, weaveth, day by day,
This parti-coloured roundelay;
Weaving for ease of misery,
Weaving this rhyme of my lady and me,
Weaving, weaving this warp of rhyme
For lovers in the after-time.

My lady, lover, may never be mine
In the same sweet way that thine is thine,
My lady and I may never stand
By the holy altar hand in hand,
My lady and I may never rest
Through the golden midnight breast to breast,
Nor share long days of happy light
Sweet moving in each other's sight:
Yea, even must we ever miss
The honey of the chastest kiss.

III

But, Song, arise thee on a greater wing,
Nor twitter robin-like of love, nor sing
A pretty dalliance with grief—but try
Some metre like a sky,
Wherein to set
Stars that may linger yet
When I, thy master, shall have come to die.
            Twitter and tweet
              Thy carollings
              Of little things,
            Of fair and sweet;
            For it is meet,
              O robin red!
            That little theme
              Hath little song,
              That little head
            Hath little dream,
              And long.
But we have starry business, such a grief
As Autumn's, dead by some forgotten sheaf,
While all the distance echoes of the wain;
Grief as an ocean's for some sudden isle
Of living green that stayed with it a while,
  Then to oblivious deluge plunged again!
Grief as of Alps that yearn but never reach,
  Grief as of Death for Life, of Night for Day:
Such grief, O Song, how hast thou strength to teach,
  How hope to make assay?

IV

ONCE

Once we met, and then there came
Like a Pentecostal flame,
    A word;
And I said not,
Only thought,
    She heard!
All I never say but sing,
Worshipping;
Wrapt in the hidden tongue
Of an ambiguous song.

How we met what need to say?
  When or where,
Years ago or yesterday,
  Here or there.
All the song is—once we met,
  She and I;
Once, but never to forget,
  Till we die.

All the song is that we meet
  Never now—
'Hast thou yet forgotten, sweet?'
  'Love, hast thou?'

V

THE DAY OF THE TWO DAFFODILS

'The daffodils are fine this year,' I said;
'O yes, but see my crocuses,' said she.
And so we entered in and sat at talk
Within a little parlour bowered about
With garden-noises, filled with garden scent,
As some sweet sea-shell rings with pearly chimes
And sighs out fragrance of its mother's breast.

We sat at talk, and all the afternoon
Whispered about in changing silences
Of flush and sudden light and gathering shade,
As though some Maestro drew out organ stops
Somewhere in heaven. As two within a boat
On the wide sea we sat at talk, the hours
Lapping unheeded round us as the waves.
And as such two will ofttimes pause in speech,
Gaze at high heaven and draw deep to their hearts
The infinite azure, then meet eyes again
And flash it to each other; without words
First, and then with voice trembling as trumpets
Tremble with fierce breath, voice cadenced too
As deep as the deep sea, Aeolian voice,
Voice of star-spaces, and the pine-wood's voice
In dewy mornings, Life's own awful voice:
So did We talk, gazing with God's own eyes
Into Life's deeps—ah, how they throbbed with stars!
And were we not ourselves like pulsing suns
Who, once an aeon met within the void,
So fiery close, forget how far away
Each orbit sweeps, and dream a little space
Of fiery wedding. So our hearts made answering
Lightnings all that afternoon through purple mists
Of riddled speech; and when at last the sun,
Our sentinel, made sign beneath the trees
Of coming night, and we arose and passed
Across the threshold to the flowers again,
We knew a presence walking in the grove,
And a voice speaking through the evening's cool
Unknown before: though Love had wrought no wrong,
His rune was spoken, and another rhyme
Writ in his poem by the master Life.