By
night we linger’d on the lawn,
For underfoot the herb was dry;
And genial warmth; and o’er the sky
The
silvery haze of summer drawn;
And
calm that let the tapers burn
Unwavering: not a cricket chirr’d:
The brook alone far-off was heard,
And
on the board the fluttering urn:
And
bats went round in fragrant skies,
And wheel’d or lit the filmy shapes
That haunt the dusk, with ermine capes
And
woolly breasts and beaded eyes;
While
now we sang old songs that peal’d
From knoll to knoll, where, couch’d at ease,
The white kine glimmer’d, and the trees
Laid
their dark arms about the field.
But
when those others, one by one,
Withdrew themselves from me and night,
And in the house light after light
Went
out, and I was all alone,
A
hunger seized my heart; I read
Of that glad year which once had been,
In those fall’n leaves which kept their green,
The
noble letters of the dead:
And
strangely on the silence broke
The silent-speaking words, and strange
Was love’s dumb cry defying change
To
test his worth; and strangely spoke
The
faith, the vigour, bold to dwell
On doubts that drive the coward back,
And keen thro’ wordy snares to track
Suggestion
to her inmost cell.
So
word by word, and line by line,
The dead man touch’d me from the past,
And all at once it seem’d at last
The
living soul was flash’d on mine,
And
mine in this was wound, and whirl’d
About empyreal heights of thought,
And came on that which is, and caught
The
deep pulsations of the world,
Æonian
music measuring out
The steps of Time–the shocks of Chance–
The blows of Death. At length my trance
Was
cancell’d, stricken thro’ with doubt.
Vague
words! but ah, how hard to frame
In matter-moulded forms of speech,
Or ev’n for intellect to reach
Thro’
memory that which I became:
Till
now the doubtful dusk reveal’d
The knolls once more where, couch’d at ease,
The white kine glimmer’d, and the trees
Laid
their dark arms about the field:
And
suck’d from out the distant gloom
A breeze began to tremble o’er
The large leaves of the sycamore,
And
fluctuate all the still perfume,
And
gathering freshlier overhead,
Rock’d the full-foliaged elms, and swung
The heavy-folded rose, and flung
The
lilies to and fro, and said
‘The
dawn, the dawn,’ and died away;
And East and West, without a breath,
Mixt their dim lights, like life and death,
To
broaden into boundless day.