| |
| I LAY upon the headland-height, and listened | |
| To the incessant sobbing of the sea | |
| In caverns under me, | |
| And watched the waves, that tossed and fled and glistened, | |
| Until the rolling meadows of amethyst | 5 |
| Melted away in mist. | |
| |
| Then suddenly, as one from sleep, I started; | |
| For round about me all the sunny capes | |
| Seemed peopled with the shapes | |
| Of those whom I had known in days departed, | 10 |
| Apparelled in the loveliness which gleams | |
| On faces seen in dreams. | |
| |
| A moment only, and the light and glory | |
| Faded away, and the disconsolate shore | |
| Stood lonely as before; | 15 |
| And the wild-roses of the promontory | |
| Around me shuddered in the wind, and shed | |
| Their petals of pale red. | |
| |
| There was an old belief that in the embers | |
| Of all things their primordial form exists, | 20 |
| And cunning alchemists | |
| Could re-create the rose with all its members | |
| From its own ashes, but without the bloom, | |
| Without the lost perfume. | |
| |
| Ah me! what wonder-working, occult science | 25 |
| Can from the ashes in our hearts once more | |
| The rose of youth restore? | |
| What craft of alchemy can bid defiance | |
| To time and change, and for a single hour | |
| Renew this phantom-flower? | 30 |
| |
| “O, give me back,” I cried, “the vanished splendors, | |
| The breath of morn, and the exultant strife, | |
| When the swift stream of life | |
| Bounds o’er its rocky channel, and surrenders | |
| The pond, with all its lilies, for the leap | 35 |
| Into the unknown deep!” | |
| |
| And the sea answered, with a lamentation, | |
| Like some old prophet wailing, and it said, | |
| “Alas! thy youth is dead! | |
| It breathes no more, its heart has no pulsation; | 40 |
| In the dark places with the dead of old | |
| It lies forever cold!” | |
| |
| Then said I, “From its consecrated cerements | |
| I will not drag this sacred dust again, | |
| Only to give me pain; | 45 |
| But, still remembering all the lost endearments, | |
| Go on my way, like one who looks before, | |
| And turns to weep no more.” | |
| |
| Into what land of harvests, what plantations | |
| Bright with autumnal foliage and the glow | 50 |
| Of sunsets burning low; | |
| Beneath what midnight skies, whose constellations | |
| Light up the spacious avenues between | |
| This world and the unseen! | |
| |
| Amid what friendly greetings and caresses, | 55 |
| What households, though not alien, yet not mine, | |
| What bowers of rest divine; | |
| To what temptations in lone wildernesses, | |
| What famine of the heart, what pain and loss, | |
| The bearing of what cross! | 60 |
| |
| I do not know; nor will I vainly question | |
| Those pages of the mystic book which hold | |
| The story still untold, | |
| But without rash conjecture or suggestion | |
| Turn its last leaves in reverence and good heed, | 65 |
| Until “The End” I read. | |
| |
