| |
| I KNOW a little garden-close | |
| Set thick with lily and red rose, | |
| Where I would wander if I might | |
| From dewy dawn to dewy night, | |
| And have one with me wandering. | 5 |
| |
| And though within it no birds sing, | |
| And though no pillar’d house is there, | |
| And though the apple boughs are bare | |
| Of fruit and blossom, would to God, | |
| Her feet upon the green grass trod, | 10 |
| And I beheld them as before! | |
| |
| There comes a murmur from the shore, | |
| And in the place two fair streams are, | |
| Drawn from the purple hills afar, | |
| Drawn down unto the restless sea. | 15 |
| The hills whose flowers ne’er fed the bee, | |
| The shore no ship has ever seen, | |
| Still beaten by the billows green, | |
| Whose murmur comes unceasingly | |
| Unto the place for which I cry. | 20 |
| |
| For which I cry both day and night, | |
| For which I let slip all delight, | |
| That maketh me both deaf and blind, | |
| Careless to win, unskill’d to find, | |
| And quick to lose what all men seek. | 25 |
| |
| Yet tottering as I am, and weak, | |
| Still have I left a little breath | |
| To seek within the jaws of death | |
| An entrance to that happy place, | |
| To seek the unforgotten face | 30 |
| Once seen, once kiss’d, once reft from me | |
| Anigh the murmuring of the sea. | |
| |
