flowers;
Sung in some past when wildernesses were,—
   Not dead, not dead, lost air!
Yet in the ages long where lurkest thou,
   And what soul knows thee now?
Wert thou not given to sweeten every wind
   From that o’erburdened mind
That bore thee through the young world, and that tongue
   By which thou first wert sung?
Was not the holy choir the endless dome,
   And nature all thy home?
Did not the warm gale clasp thee to his breast.
   Lulling thy storms to rest?
And is the June air laden with thee now,
   Passing the summer-bough?
And is the dawn-wind on a lonely sea
   Balmy with thoughts of thee?
To rock on daybreak winds dost thou rejoice,
   As first on his strong voice
Whose radiant morning soul did give thee birth,
   Gave thee to heaven and earth?
Or did each bird win one dear note of thee
   To pipe eternally?
Art thou the secret of the small field-flowers
   Nodding thy time for hours,
—Blown by the happy winds from hill to hill,
   And such a secret still?
Or wert thou rapt awhile to other spheres
   To gladden tenderer ears?
Doth music’s soul contain thee, precious air,
   Sleepest thou clasped there,
Until a time shall come for thee to start
   Into some unborn heart?
Then wilt thou as the clouds of ages roll,
   Thou migratory soul,
Amid a different, wilder, wilderness
   —In crowds that throng and press,
Revive thy blessed cadences forgotten
   In some soul new-begotten?
Oh, wilt thou ever tire of thy long rest
   On nature’s silent breast?
And wilt thou leave thy rainbow showers, to bear
   A part in human care?
—Forsake thy boundless silence to make choice
   Of some pathetic voice?
—Forsake thy stars, thy suns, thy moons, thy skies
   For man’s desiring sighs?

SONNET—THE POET TO NATURE

I have no secrets from thee, lyre sublime,
   My lyre whereof I make my melody.
   I sing one way like the west wind through thee,
With my whole heart, and hear thy sweet strings chime.

But thou, who soundest in my tune and rhyme,
   Hast tones I wake not, in thy land and sea,
   Loveliness not for me, secrets from me,
Thoughts for another, and another time.

And as, the west wind passed, the south wind alters
   His intimate sweet things, his hues of noon,
      The voices of his waves, sound of his pine,

The meanings of his lost heart,—this thought falters
   In my short song—‘Another bard shall tune
      Thee, my one Lyre, to other songs than mine.’

THE POET TO HIS CHILDHOOD

In my thought I see you stand with a path on either hand,
—Hills that look into the sun, and there a river’d meadow-land.
And your lost voice with the things that it decreed across me thrills,
   When you thought, and chose the hills.

‘If it prove a life of pain, greater have I judged the gain.
With a singing soul for music’s sake, I climb and meet the rain,
And I choose, whilst I am calm, my thought and labouring to be
   Unconsoled by sympathy.’

But how dared you use me so?  For you bring my ripe years low
To your child’s whim and a destiny your child-soul could not know.
And that small voice legislating I revolt against, with tears.
   But you mark not, through the years.

‘To the mountain leads my way.  If the plains are green to-day,
These my barren hills are flushing faintly, strangely, in the May,
With the presence of the Spring amongst the smallest flowers that grow.’
   But the summer in the snow?

Do you know, who are so bold, how in sooth the rule will hold,
Settled by a wayward child’s ideal at some ten years old?
—How the human arms you slip from, thoughts and love you stay not for,
   Will not open to you more?

You were rash then, little child, for the skies with storms are wild,
And you faced the dim horizon with its whirl of mists, and smiled,
Climbed a little higher, lonelier, in the solitary sun,
   To feel how the winds came on.

But your sunny silence there, solitude so light to bear,
Will become a long dumb world up in the colder sadder air,
And the little mournful lonelinesses in the little hills
    Wider wilderness fulfils.

And if e’er you should come down to the village or the town,
With the cold rain for your garland, and the wind for your renown,
You will stand upon the thresholds with a face or dumb desire,
    Nor be known by any fire.

It is memory that shrinks.  You were all too brave, methinks,
Climbing solitudes of flowering cistus and the thin wild pinks,
Musing, setting to a haunting air in one vague reverie
    All the life that was to be.

With a smile do I complain in the safety of the pain,
Knowing that my feet can never quit their solitudes again;
But regret may turn with longing to that one hour’s choice you had,
    When the silence broodeth sad.

I rebel not, child gone by, but obey you wonderingly,
For you knew not, young rash speaker, all you spoke, and now will I,
With the life, and all the loneliness revealed that you thought fit,
   Sing the Amen, knowing it.

SONNET

A poet of one mood in all my lays,
   Ranging all life to sing one only love,
   Like a west wind across the world I move,
Sweeping my harp of floods mine own wild ways.

The countries change, but not the west-wind days
   Which are my songs.  My soft skies shine above,
   And on all seas the colours of a dove,
And on all fields a flash of silver greys.

I make the whole world answer to my art
   And sweet monotonous meanings.  In your ears
I change not ever, bearing, for my part,
   One thought that is the treasure of my years,
A small cloud full of rain upon my heart
   And in mine arms, clasped, like a child in tears.

AN UNMARKED FESTIVAL

There’s a feast undated yet:
   Both our true lives hold it fast,—
The first day we ever met.
   What a great day came and passed!
   —Unknown then, but known at last.

And we met: You knew not me,
   Mistress of your joys and fears;
Held my hands that held the key
   Of the treasure of your years,
   Of the fountain of your tears.

For you knew not it was I,
    And I knew not it was you.
We have learnt, as days went by.
    But a flower struck root and grew
    Underground, and no one knew.

Days of days!  Unmarked it rose,
   In whose hours we were to meet;
And forgotten passed.  Who knows,
   Was earth cold or sunny, Sweet,
   At the coming of your feet?

One mere day, we thought; the measure
   Of such days the year fulfils.
Now, how dearly would we treasure
   Something from its fields, its rills,
   And its memorable hills;

—But one leaf of oak or lime,
    Or one blossom from its bowers
No one gathered at the time.
    Oh, to keep that day of ours
   By one relic of its flowers!

SONNET—THE NEOPHYTE

Who knows what days I answer for to-day:
   Giving the bud I give the flower.  I bow
   This yet unfaded and a faded brow;
Bending these knees and feeble knees, I pray.

Thoughts yet unripe in me I bend one way,
   Give one repose to pain I know not now,
   One leaven to joy that comes, I guess not how.
I dedicate my fields when Spring is grey.

Oh, rash! (I smile) to pledge my hidden wheat.
   I fold to-day at altars far