• Have you seen, at heaven's mid-height,
• In the moon-rack's ebb and tide,
• Venus leap forth burning white,
• Dian pale and hide?
• So my bright breast-jewel, so my bride,
• 20 One sweet night, when fear takes flight,
• Shall leap against my side.

   

• I have been here before,
• But when or how I cannot tell:
• I know the grass beyond the door,
• The sweet keen smell,
• The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

• You have been mine before,—
• How long ago I may not know:
• But just when at that swallow's soar
• Your neck turned so,
• 10 Some veil did fall,—I knew it all of yore.

• Has this been thus before?
• And shall not thus time's eddying flight
• Still with our lives our love restore
• In death's despite,
• And day and night yield one delight once more?

   

• A little while a little love
• The hour yet bears for thee and me
• Who have not drawn the veil to see
• If still our heaven be lit above.
• Thou merely, at the day's last sigh,
• Hast felt thy soul prolong the tone;
• And I have heard the night-wind cry
• And deemed its speech mine own.

• A little while a little love
• 10 The scattering autumn hoards for us
• Whose bower is not yet ruinous
• Nor quite unleaved our songless grove.
• Only across the shaken boughs
• We hear the flood-tides seek the sea,
• And deep in both our hearts they rouse
• One wail for thee and me.

• A little while a little love
• May yet be ours who have not said
• The word it makes our eyes afraid
• 20 To know that each is thinking of.
• Not yet the end: be our lips dumb
• In smiles a little season yet:
• I'll tell thee, when the end is come,
• How we may best forget.

   

• Say, is it day, is it dusk in thy bower,
• Thou whom I long for, who longest for me?
• Oh! be it light, be it night, 'tis Love's hour,
• Love's that is fettered as Love's that is free.
• Free Love has leaped to that innermost chamber,
• Oh! the last time, and the hundred before:
• Fettered Love, motionless, can but remember,
• Yet something that sighs from him passes the door.

• Nay, but my heart when it flies to thy bower,
• 10 What does it find there that knows it again?
• There it must droop like a shower-beaten flower,
• Red at the rent core and dark with the rain.
• Ah! yet what shelter is still shed above it,—
• What waters still image its leaves torn apart?
• Thy soul is the shade that clings round it to love it,
• And tears are its mirror deep down in thy heart.

• What were my prize, could I enter thy bower,
• This day, to-morrow, at eve or at morn?
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• Large lovely arms and a neck like a tower,
• 20 Bosom then heaving that now lies forlorn.
• Kindled with love-breath, (the sun's kiss is colder!)
• Thy sweetness all near me, so distant to-day;
• My hand round thy neck and thy hand on my shoulder,
• My mouth to thy mouth as the world melts away.

• What is it keeps me afar from thy bower,—
• My spirit, my body, so fain to be there?
• Waters engulfing or fires that devour?—
• Earth heaped against me or death in the air?
• Nay, but in day-dreams, for terror, for pity,
• 30 The trees wave their heads with an omen to tell;
• Nay, but in night-dreams, throughout the dark city,
• The hours, clashed together, lose count in the bell.

• Shall I not one day remember thy bower,
• One day when all days are one day to me?—
• Thinking, ‘I stirred not, and yet had the power!’—
• Yearning, ‘Ah God, if again it might be!’
• Peace, peace! such a small lamp illumes, on this highway,
• So dimly so few steps in front of my feet,—
• Yet shows me that her way is parted from my way. . . .
• 40 Out of sight, beyond light, at what goal may we meet?

   

• I did not look upon her eyes,
• (Though scarcely seen, with no surprise,
• 'Mid many eyes a single look,)
• Because they should not gaze rebuke,
• At night, from stars in sky and brook.

• I did not take her by the hand,
• (Though little was to understand
• From touch of hand all friends might take,)
• Because it should not prove a flake
• 10 Burnt in my palm to boil and ache.

• I did not listen to her voice,
• (Though none had noted, where at choice
• All might rejoice in listening,)
• Because no such a thing should cling
• In the wood's moan at evening.

• I did not cross her shadow once,
• (Though from the hollow west the sun's
• Last shadow runs along so far,)
• Because in June it should not bar
• 20 My ways, at noon when fevers are.

• They told me she was sad that day,
• (Though wherefore tell what love's soothsay,
• Sooner than they, did register?)
• And my heart leapt and wept to her,
• And yet I did not speak nor stir.

• So shall the tongues of the sea's foam
• (Though many voices therewith come
• From drowned hope's home to cry to me,)
• Bewail one hour the more, when sea
• 30 And wind are one with memory.

   

• Along the grass sweet airs are blown
• Our way this day in Spring.
• Of all the songs that we have known
• Now which one shall we sing?
• Not that, my love, ah no!—
• Not this, my love? why, so!—
• Yet both were ours, but hours will come and go.

• The grove is all a pale frail mist,
• The new year sucks the sun.
• 10 Of all the kisses that we kissed
• Now which shall be the one?
• Not that, my love, ah no!—
• Not this, my love?—heigh-ho
• For all the sweets that all the winds can blow!

• The branches cross above our eyes,
• The skies are in a net:
• And what's the thing beneath the skies
• We two would most forget?
• Not birth, my love, no, no,—
• 20 Not death, my love, no, no,—
• The love once ours, but ours long hours ago.

   

• So it is, my dear.
• All such things touch secret strings
• For heavy hearts to hear.
• So it is, my dear.

• Very like indeed:
• Sea and sky, afar, on high,
• Sand and strewn seaweed,—
• Very like indeed.

• But the sea stands spread
• 10 As one wall with the flat skies,
• Where the lean black craft like flies
• Seem well-nigh stagnated,
• Soon to drop off dead.

• Seemed it so to us
• When I was thine and thou wast mine,
• And all these things were thus,
• But all our world in us?

• Could we be so now?
• Not if all beneath heaven's pall
• 20 Lay dead but I and thou,
• Could we be so now!

   

• The wind flapped loose, the wind was still,
• Shaken out dead from tree and hill:
• I had walked on at the wind's will,—
• I sat now, for the wind was still.

• Between my knees my forehead was,—
• My lips, drawn in, said not Alas!
• My hair was over in the grass,
• My naked ears heard the day pass.

• My eyes, wide open, had the run
• 10 Of some ten weeds to fix upon;
• Among those few, out of the sun,
• The woodspurge flowered, three cups in one.

• From perfect grief there need not be
• Wisdom or even memory:
• One thing then learnt remains to me,—
• The woodspurge has a cup of three.

   

• I plucked a honeysuckle where
• The hedge on high is quick with thorn,
• And climbing for the prize, was torn,
• And fouled my feet in quag-water;
• And by the thorns and by the wind
• The blossom that I took was thinn'd,
• And yet I found it sweet and fair.

• Thence to a richer growth I came,
• Where, nursed in mellow intercourse,
• 10 The honeysuckles sprang by scores,
• Not harried like my single stem,
• All virgin lamps of scent and dew.
• So from my hand that first I threw,
• Yet plucked not any more of them.

   

• These little firs to-day are things
• To clasp into a giant's cap,
• Or fans to suit his lady's lap.
• From many winters many springs
• Shall cherish them in strength and sap,
• Till they be marked upon the map,
• A wood for the wind's wanderings.

• All seed is in the sower's hands:
• And what at first was trained to spread
• 10 Its shelter for some single head,—
• Yea, even such fellowship of wands,—
• May hide the sunset, and the shade
• Of its great multitude be laid
• Upon the earth and elder sands.

   

• Consider the sea's listless chime:
• Time's self it is, made audible,—
• The murmur of the earth's own shell.
• Secret continuance sublime
• Is the sea's end: our sight may pass
• No furlong further. Since time was,
• This sound hath told the lapse of time.

• No quiet, which is death's,—it hath
• The mournfulness of ancient life,
• 10 Enduring always at dull strife.
• As the world's heart of rest and wrath,
• Its painful pulse is in the sands.
• Last utterly, the whole sky stands,
• Grey and not known, along its path.

• Listen alone beside the sea,
• Listen alone among the woods;
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• Those voices of twin solitudes
• Shall have one sound alike to thee:
• Hark where the murmurs of thronged men
• 20 Surge and sink back and surge again,—
• Still the one voice of wave and tree.

• Gather a shell from the strown beach
• And listen at its lips: they sigh
• The same desire and mystery,
• The echo of the whole sea's speech.
• And all mankind is thus at heart
• Not anything but what thou art:
• And Earth, Sea, Man, are all in each.