And into tenderness soon dying, Wheel out their giddy moment, then Resign the soul to love again. A more precipitated vein Of notes, that eddy in the flow Of smoothest song, they come, they go, And leave their sweeter understrain Its own sweet self-a love of Thee That seems, yet cannot greater be! RECOLLECTIONS OF LOVE. 1. How warm this woodland wild Recess ! LOVE surely hath been breathing here. And this sweet bed of heath, my dear! Swells up, then sinks with faint caress, As if to have you yet more near. II. Eight springs have flown, since last I lay On sea-ward Quantock's heathy hills, Where quiet sounds from hidden rills Float here and there, like things astray, And high o'er head the sky-lark shrills. III. No voice as yet had made the air Be music with your name: yet why That asking look? That yearning sigh? That sense of promise every where? Beloved! flew your spirit by? IV. As when a mother doth explore The rose-mark on her long lost child, I met, I lov'd you, maiden mild! As whom I long had loy'd before— So deeply had I been beguil❜d. V. You stood before me like a thought, A dream remember'd in a dream. But when those meek eyes first did seem To tell me, Love within you wrought O Greta, dear domestic stream! VI. Has not, since then, Love's prompture deep, Has not Love's whisper evermore, Been ceaseless, as thy gentle roar? Sole voice, when other voices sleep, Dear under-song in Clamor's hour. ON RE-VISITING THE SEA-SHORE, AFTER LONG ABSENCE, Under strong medical recommendation not to bathe. GOD be with thee, gladsome Ocean! Dissuading spake the mild Physician, But my soul fulfill'd her mission, And lo! I breathe untroubled breath! FASHION'S pining Sons and Daughters, Me a thousand hopes and pleasures, A thousand recollections bland, Thoughts sublime, and stately measures, Revisit on thy echoing strand : Dreams, (the Soul herself forsaking,) A blessed shadow of this Earth! O ye hopes, that stir within me, Health comes with you from above! God is with me, God is in me! I cannot die, if Life be Love. |