Grass of Parnassus | Page 4

B.]
Westward I watch the low green hills of Wales,?The low sky silver grey,?The turbid Channel with the wandering sails?Moans through the winter day.?There is no colour but one ashen light?On tower and lonely tree,?The little church upon the windy height?Is grey as sky or sea.?But there hath he that woke the sleepless Love?Slept through these fifty years,?There is the grave that has been wept above?With more than mortal tears.?And far below I hear the Channel sweep?And all his waves complain,?As Hallam's dirge through all the years must keep?Its monotone of pain.

Grey sky, brown waters, as a bird that flies,?My heart flits forth from these?Back to the winter rose of northern skies,?Back to the northern seas.?And lo, the long waves of the ocean beat?Below the minster grey,?Caverns and chapels worn of saintly feet,?And knees of them that pray.?And I remember me how twain were one?Beside that ocean dim,?I count the years passed over since the sun?That lights me looked on him,?And dreaming of the voice that, save in sleep,?Shall greet me not again,?Far, far below I hear the Channel sweep?And all his waves complain.
TWILIGHT ON TWEED.
Three crests against the saffron sky,?Beyond the purple plain,?The kind remembered melody?Of Tweed once more again.
Wan water from the border hills,?Dear voice from the old years,?Thy distant music lulls and stills,?And moves to quiet tears.
Like a loved ghost thy fabled flood?Fleets through the dusky land;?Where Scott, come home to die, has stood,?My feet returning stand.
A mist of memory broods and floats,?The Border waters flow;?The air is full of ballad notes,?Borne out of long ago.
Old songs that sung themselves to me,?Sweet through a boy's day dream,?While trout below the blossom'd tree?Plashed in the golden steam.

Twilight, and Tweed, and Eildon Hill,?Fair and too fair you be;?You tell me that the voice is still?That should have welcomed me.
1870.
METEMPSYCHOSIS.
I shall not see thee, nay, but I shall know?Perchance, the grey eyes in another's eyes,?Shall guess thy curls in gracious locks that flow?On purest brows, yea, and the swift surmise?Shall follow and track, and find thee in disguise?Of all sad things, and fair, where sunsets glow,?When through the scent of heather, faint and low,?The weak wind whispers to the day that dies.
From all sweet art, and out of all old rhyme,?Thine eyes and lips are light and song to me;?The shadows of the beauty of all time,?In song or story are but shapes of thee;?Alas, the shadowy shapes! ah, sweet my dear,?Shall life or death bring all thy being near?
LOST IN HADES.
I dreamed that somewhere in the shadowy place,?Grief of farewell unspoken was forgot?In welcome, and regret remembered not;?And hopeless prayer accomplished turned to praise?On lips that had been songless many days;?Hope had no more to hope for, and desire?And dread were overpast, in white attire?New born we walked among the new world's ways.
Then from the press of shades a spirit threw?Towards me such apples as these gardens bear;?And turning, I was 'ware of her, and knew?And followed her fleet voice and flying hair,--?Followed, and found her not, and seeking you?I found you never, dearest, anywhere.
A STAR IN THE NIGHT.
The perfect piteous beauty of thy face?Is like a star the dawning drives away;?Mine eyes may never see in the bright day?Thy pallid halo, thy supernal grace;?But in the night from forth the silent place?Thou comest, dim in dreams, as doth a stray?Star of the starry flock that in the grey?Is seen, and lost, and seen a moment's space.
And as the earth at night turns to a star,?Loved long ago, and dearer than the sun,?So in the spiritual place afar,?At night our souls are mingled and made one,?And wait till one night fall, and one dawn rise,?That brings no noon too splendid for your eyes.
A SUNSET ON YARROW.
The wind and the day had lived together,?They died together, and far away?Spoke farewell in the sultry weather,?Out of the sunset, over the heather,?The dying wind and the dying day.
Far in the south, the summer levin?Flushed, a flame in the grey soft air:?We seemed to look on the hills of heaven;?You saw within, but to me 'twas given?To see your face, as an angel's, there.
Never again, ah surely never?Shall we wait and watch, where of old we stood,?The low good-night of the hill and the river,?The faint light fade, and the wan stars quiver,?Twain grown one in the solitude.
ANOTHER WAY.
Come to me in my dreams, and then,?One saith, I shall be well again,?For then the night will more than pay?The hopeless longing of the day.
Nay, come not THOU in dreams, my sweet,?With shadowy robes, and silent feet,?And with the voice, and with the eyes?That greet me in a soft surprise.
Last night, last night, in dreams we met,?And how, to-day, shall I forget,?Or how, remembering, restrain?Mine incommunicable pain?
Nay, where thy land and people are,?Dwell thou remote, apart, afar,?Nor mingle with the shapes that sweep?The melancholy ways