Robert Laurence Binyon: Verses about Time

I am here, and you;
The sun blesses us through
Leaves made of light.
The air is in your hair;
You hold a flower.

O worlds, that roll through night,
O Time, O terrible year,
Where surges of fury and fear
Rave, to us you gave
This island--hour.

Seven years have flown like seven days,
Like seven days of shining weather,
Since we, forsaking single ways,
Trod earth and faced the skies together.
The old is new, the new is old,
And who shall reckon, one or seven,
The years that Time has never told?
He numbers not the days of Heaven.

Pale are the words I build for my delight
To house in; pale as the chill mist that holds
An ardent morn. My fire to others' sight
But dimly burns through the frail speech it moulds;
I cast but shadows from my inward light.
But, O my Joy, thou understandest well
Both what I can and what I cannot tell.

COME then, as ever, like the wind at morning!
Joyous, O Youth, in the aged world renew
Freshness to feel the eternities around it,
Rain, stars and clouds, light and the sacred dew.
The strong sun shines above thee:
That strength, that radiance bring!
If Winter come to Winter,
When shall men hope for Spring?

Ask me not, Dear, what thing it is
That makes me love you so;
What graces, what sweet qualities,
That from your spirit flow:
For I have but this old reply,
That you are you, that I am I.

My heart leaps when you look on me,
And thrills to hear your voice.
Lies, then, in these the mystery
That makes my soul rejoice?
I only know, I love you true;
Since I am I, and you are you.

In the shadow of a broken house,
Down a deserted street,
Propt walls, cold hearths, and phantom stairs,
And the silence of dead feet —
Locked wildly in one another's arms
I saw two lovers meet.

And over that hearthless house aghast
Rose from the mind's abyss
Lost stars and ruined, peering moons,
Worlds overshadowing this, —
Time's stony palace crumbled down
Before that instant kiss.

The shrines of old are broken down;
The faiths that knelt at them are dead.
Nothing's strange, and nought unknown:
All's been done and all been said.
Tired of knowledge, now we sigh
For a little mystery.

Yet, howsoever science delves,
A few things still unplumbed remain.
We know all things save ourselves,
Cannot will our joy or pain.
Mysteries our hearts enthral;
And love's the strangest of them all.

The shrines of old are broken down;
The faiths that knelt at them are dead.
Nothing's strange, and nought unknown:
All's been done and all been said.
Tired of knowledge, now we sigh
For a little mystery.

Yet, howsoever science delves,
A few things still unplumbed remain.
We know all things save ourselves,
Cannot will our joy or pain.
Mysteries our hearts enthral;
And love's the strangest of them all.

Beautifully dies the year.
Silence sleeps upon the mere:
Yellow leaves float on it, stilly
As, in June, the opened lily.
Brushing o'er the frosty grass
I watch a moment, ere I pass,
From beeches that will soon be bare
Down the still November air
The lovely ways of gliding leaves.
Perhaps they budded on Spring eves
When we two walked and talked together!
Autumn thoughts for Autumn weather!
I wish some days that I remember
Could glide from me, this fair November.

Beautifully dies the year.
Silence sleeps upon the mere:
Yellow leaves float on it, stilly
As, in June, the opened lily.
Brushing o'er the frosty grass
I watch a moment, ere I pass,
From beeches that will soon be bare
Down the still November air
The lovely ways of gliding leaves.
Perhaps they budded on Spring eves
When we two walked and talked together!
Autumn thoughts for Autumn weather!
I wish some days that I remember
Could glide from me, this fair November.

Together by bright water
We sat, my love and I.
Light as a skimming swallow
The perfect hour went by
With words like ripples breaking
On full thoughts softly waking;
With thoughts so dear and shy
That no word dared to follow.

Down by that sunny water
The spring's sweet voice we heard.
The wind, the leaves' young lover,
My love's hair gently stirred.
An hour ago we parted;
I wander heavy--hearted.
Heavily, like a wounded bird,
The day lags, night draws over.

Within the eyes of Dream--Come--True
Shine the old dreams of my youth.
Ere they faded, ere they grew
Distant, they were born anew
In her truth.
Within the heart of Dream--Come--True
Lies my life, a folded bud.
All that is to hope and do,
Joy and triumph, toil and rue,
Skies of thunder, skies of blue,
Pulse in pulses of her blood.
O may the fountain leap in flood,
The young shoot branch in leafy wood,
Blest in promise through and through
By the dear thoughts of Dream--Come--True.

When old wounds bleed again
In the silence of the night,
And mixt with sweet delight
Wells up the stream of pain,
Is it less hard to endure
That when the sword struck first
So keen, with edge so sure?
Was that wild hour the worst?

O then a too strong smart
O'erwhelmed the senses' power.
Now in some tranquil hour
When, fortified, the heart
Is capable at ease
Of sorrow, now returns
By exquisite degrees
Pain, and in silence burns.

Is this still woe forlorn
Less than that fierce despair?
Perhaps 'tis worse to bear
Because 'tis easier borne.

A day that is boundless as youth
And gay with delight to be born,
Where the waves flash and glide over sands
In their pure image rippled and worn;
Where laughter is young on the air
As the race of young feet patters light!
Linked shadows run dancing before
In the midst of the infinite light!
On a violet horizon asleep
One milky sail glimmers afar;
And our spirits are free of the world
With nothing to bind or to bar;
With no thought but the thoughts of a child;
O golden the day and the hour!
The strong sea is charmed from his rage,
And the waste is more fair than a flower.

There came an evening when the storm had died
After long rain, miraculously clear:
And lo, across the burning waters wide
Rose up that coast, to thee and me how dear.

I knew the very houses by the bay.
And as I gazed, the time that clouded thick
On those old hours, fell suddenly away,
And memory was bared, even to the quick.

There was no peace then in the evening light;
For all my joy was left on that far shore.
Betwixt that apparition and the night
Alone I was; and I was brave no more.

Could I not keep thee, even in my heart?
O, my dear love, we perish, when we part.

To other voices, other majesties,
Removed this while, Peace shall resort again.
But he was with us in our darkest pain
And stormiest hour: his faith royally dyes
The colours of our cause; his voice replies
To all our doubt, dear spirit! heart and vein
Of England's old adventure! his proud strain
Rose from our earth to the sea--breathing skies.

Even over chaos and the murdering roar
Comes that world--winning music, whose full stops
Sounded all man, the bestial and divine;
Terrible as thunder, fresh as April drops.
He stands, he speaks, the soul--transfigured sign
Of all our story, on the English shore.

Move onward, Time, and bring us sooner free
From this self--clouding turmoil where we ply
On others' errands driven continually:
O lead us to our own souls, ere we die!

We toil for that we love not; thou concealest
Our true loves from us; all we thirst to attain
Thou darkly holdest, and alone revealest
A mirror that our sighs for ever stain.

Art thou so jealous of our full delight?
Thou takest our strength, toil, fervour, and sweet youth;
And when thou hast taken these, thou givest sight
At last to see and to endure the truth.

Thou art too swift to our weak steps; but oh,
To our desire thou movest, Time, how slow!

Time, Time, who choosest
All in the end well;
Who severely refusest
Fames upon trumpets blown
Loud for a day, and alone
Makest truth to excel:

Shadow of God, slowly
Gathering words, long
Scorned, to make them holy,
And deeds like stars bright
That none perceived in the light,
Lifting the weak to be strong:

Shall I not praise thee,
Thou just judge? Yet O
What so long stays thee?
Why must thy feet halt,
While our tears grow salt
And our old hopes go!

Beauty is throned at last;
Truth rings falsehood's knell;
But our strength, our joy is past
While our hearts wait thee:
Time, Time, I hate thee,
Hate thee, and rebel.

The winds of all the world bring agonies,
Day by day, hour by hour, into our ears;
Not only desolation, blood, and tears,
But cloud on cloud of suffocating lies.

The human strives with the inhuman there,
Enduring things beyond belief, and still
Because of one unconquerable will
Confronts, clear--eyed, what it has yet to bear.

Before the sunrise, under naked trees
On grass that sparkled in the dew, I paced.
I thought of all the torment, all the waste;
I thought of beauty, justice, mercy, peace.

Beyond the raging of the powers of night
What from of old stood, still was dear, was true.
Far in the East the sky to glory grew,
And slowly earth rolled onward into light.

O sorrowful thought! But one more flying year,
And our ways part, perhaps no more to meet:
And must we, then, less dear
Grow to each other, as the swift days fleet?

Look, as two boughs from one stem branching grow
Apart, until their high leaves touch no longer;
Save when some chance gust, stronger
Than most, the one back to the other blow:

Like that tree's branches, so shall we two be;
Our paths how far divorced from where they started!
Yet still, however parted,
Rooted in the dear past and memory.

Time cannot take those; for our souls are free,
Whatever come. Then O when you have leisure
For old thoughts, think of me,
Whose mind holds you for its most treasured treasure.

O sorrowful thought! But one more flying year,
And our ways part, perhaps no more to meet:
And must we, then, less dear
Grow to each other, as the swift days fleet?

Look, as two boughs from one stem branching grow
Apart, until their high leaves touch no longer;
Save when some chance gust, stronger
Than most, the one back to the other blow:

Like that tree's branches, so shall we two be;
Our paths how far divorced from where they started!
Yet still, however parted,
Rooted in the dear past and memory.

Time cannot take those; for our souls are free,
Whatever come. Then O when you have leisure
For old thoughts, think of me,
Whose mind holds you for its most treasured treasure.

Time, that has crumbled to impotent nothingness
Empire on empire, towering in arrogance,
Time, at whose finger invisibly commanding
Their bannered battalions marched to oblivion,

Time stays motionless when are heard the voices
Of Hellas, proclaiming over a wondering world
Wisdom and joy and the radiance of reality
Disclosed as in an eternal sunrise.

Clear as the mountain--peaks (O many--mountained
Hellas!) soar in the morning splendour
When the valleys below them drowse in shadow,
Those voices into the light uplift us.

Now in the hour of menacing malignity
Hellas, holding the ancient passes
Stands for the world's cause, knowing it invincible,
Knowing that beside her stand the Immortals.

All paths lead upward to the sky
In this green isle, which mounts on high
Through slumbrous valleys, veiled in light
From waters dancing blue and bright.

And on those leafy paths appear
Delicately stepping deer
That move in wild and silent grace,
The very spirits of the place.

Whether by old pine--roots they stand
Or print small hoof--marks on sea--sand,
Their liquid eyes, their gentle tread,
Are innocent of human dread.

Beneath the ancient boughs they seem
Strayed from the memory or the dream
Or hope of man, the Golden Age,
His unrecovered heritage.

This sacred isle has banished death;
And yet I would that my last breath
Might amid ocean--murmur cease
On such an isle, in such a peace.

Gaunt on the cloudy plain
Stand the great Stones,
Dwarfed in the vast reach
Of a sky that owns

All the measure of earth
Within its cloud--hung cave.
Dumb stands the Circle
As on a God's grave.

But clattering with horses
Up from the valley,
With horses and horsemen
At a trot, gaily

Dragging the limbered guns,
Youth comes riding,--
Easy sits, mettlesome
Horses bestriding.

Fast come the twinkling hoofs,
Light wheels and guns,
Invading the upland,
And sweep past the Stones.

Giant those shapes now
Over them tower,--
Time's dark stature
Over Youth's fleet hour.

Ribs of dismemoried Earth,
Guard what you may!
The Immortals also
Pass, nor stay.

Home from the wounds of Earth and wasting Time
The marvel of her beauty and morning prime
She has taken, glorious with the dew of youth
Still on her thoughts, those thoughts that from her eyes
Gleamed still or splendid, unafraid of truth;
All her white passion, all the secrecies
Of wild, sweet fire that her heart guarded, all
Her heart's young rose, ere yet one leaf could fade or fall!

She that was made like a song nobly wrought
In fine, fair mould of movement, speech and thought,
With glory of hair about the buoyant head;--
In breaking voices we her beauty tell:
But she is radiant, she is perfected,
Where our long hopes far from our sorrows dwell,
A song unended, but a song so sweet,
No tongue of mortal dares its melody complete.

Time buys no wisdom like the eyes of youth,
Though youth itself be blinded with delight,
As a buoyant swimmer by the bursting spray
Of the resplendent surge, and know not yet
The marvel of its own heart's vision, blurred
By lovely follies dancing in the sun.
I heard a skylark scaling the spring air
As slow I climbed the misty, rough hill--side.
He poured the wordless wonder of his joy
Into the empty sky: was never word
Of human language held a joy so pure;
But it was I who knew it! Though my feet
Stayed on the plodded earth and in the mist,
Yet I could breathe, float, mount and sing with him,
The unweariable singer; I could bathe
In the beyond of blue, and know the round
Of sea beneath me, and the sun above.
He gave of what he knew not, soaring throat!

In the April sun
Shuffling, shapeless, bent,
Cobweb--eyed, with stick
Searching, one by one,
Gutter--heaps, intent
Wretched rags to pick.

Oh, is this a man?--
Man, whose spirit erect
Trampling circumstance,
Death and evil, can
Measure worlds, nor checked
By fell time and chance,

With undaunted eye,
With a mouth of song,
Front the starry blue?--
(O you passers--by,
Moving swift and strong,
Answer, what seek you?)

Husk of manhood, mere
Shrivel of his kind!--
In a bloodless mask
How the old eyes peer,
With no light behind!--
Mate of his mean task;

Yet this wreckage fill
With a thought, possess
With a faith's empire,
It shall be a will
Mightier than the seas,
Man, more dread than fire!

A far look in absorbed eyes, unaware
Of what some gazer thrills to gather there;
A happy voice, singing to itself apart,
That pulses new blood through a listener's heart;
Old fortitude; and, 'mid an hour of dread,
The scorn of all odds in a proud young head;-
These are themselves, and being but what they are,
Of others' praise or pity have no care,
Yet still are magnets to another's need.
Invisibly as wind, blowing stray seed,
Life breathes on life, though ignorant what it brings,
And spirit touches spirit on the strings
Where music is: courage from courage glows
In secret; shy powers to themselves unclose;
And the most solitary hope, that gray
Patience has sister'd, ripens far away
In young bosoms. Oh, we have failed and failed,
And never knew if we or the world ailed,
Clouded and thwarted; yet perhaps the best
Of all we do and dream of lives unguessed.

Splendours of sunset burned upon the ground,
As from the lane's deep shade
Emerging, a warm grassy plat we found
Skirting the forest glade,
And in the midst a solitary oak.
No sound the bright and haunting stillness broke
As we beheld the wonder of this tree,
His shadowy core invaded thick by rays
That kindled the rough trunk, and ardently
Made burn the massy branches, thrusting higher
And wider their strong foliage, knotted sprays
Of tawny and bronze leaves defined in fire.

Silence possessed us pausing, and our eyes
Stayed wondering to behold
In that illumined solitude arise
Those fiery branches old.
It seemed a mighty apparition brought
From far to trouble us; planted beyond thought
And budding calm into a time not ours.
Then, then smote full upon our inmost heart
Its mortal weakness: without bound and vast
Our longing, but our scope brief as the flowers,
That in a season perish and are past.

Spring has leapt into Summer.
A glory has gone from the green.
The flush of the poplar has sobered out,
The flame in the leaf of the lime is dulled:
But I am thinking of the young men
Whose faces are no more seen.

Where is the pure blossom
That fell and refused to grow old?
The clustered radiance, perfumed whiteness,
Silent singing of joy in the blue?
--I am thinking of the young men
Whose splendour is under the mould.

Youth, the wonder of the world,
Opened--eyed at an opened door,
When the world is as honey in the flower, and as wine
To the heart, and as music newly begun!
O the young men, the myriads of the young men,
Whose beauty returns no more!

Spring will come, when the Earth remembers,
In sun--bursts after the rain,
And the leaf be fresh and lovely on the bough,
And the myriad shining blossom be born:
But I shall be thinking of the young men
Whose eyes will not shine on us again.

Peace in smooth summer hour
Paces the seas awhile;
But Peace has built her tower
Upon this chosen isle.

Scarcely a ripple stirs
In this lone shore's recess,
Scarcely a motion blurs
The mirrored cypresses

Ranked on a crumbling wall,
O'er slopes of flowery grass;
Where their long shadows fall,
Butterflies gleam and pass.

The idle sunshine sleeps
Before a porch; within,
Cool the white cloister keeps
Peace that has always been.

Beyond, a tangled plot
Of garden and tall trees,
Soothing its fragrance hot
In freshness from the seas.

There young monks slowly pace
With seldom--lifted eyes,
With world--unwritten face,
Not mournful yet nor wise.

Have they in this fair fold
Lost the fierce world in truth?
Or must the storms of old
Still shake the heart of youth?

Far in blue northern haze
The vast Alps glimmer pale,
Faint through the slumbrous blaze
Comes the white sea--gull's wail.

In the hollow of pale night upon the moor
The silence blows a perfume: O but hark!
A sound is in the bosom of the dark,
Breathed like a secret from the glimmering shore;
A vigil of unearthly sound, the sea
That never slumbers and begins anew,
And melts into our hearts amid the dew,
Murmuring on the moor to you and me.

Out of a silence dateless as the old earth,
Before ear heard or ever voice could frame
Speech, or the human dearness of a name,
To glorify man's longing or his mirth,
Ere ever any place was historied
For hearts that sever yet their own home keep,
That sound comes immemorial like sleep
Fresh, with the morning in dark softness hid.

O Love, O Love, were we not there, we too,
In far nights and wild silences? Were we
Not part of this old secret of the sea?
For O your kiss, thrilling my body through,
Touches me from eternity, as if I
And you were of the things before Time came
To measure men's desire and loss and shame,
And no use disenchants this mystery.

Negligently the cart--track descends into the valley;
The drench of the rain has passed and the clover breathes;
Scents are abroad; in the valley a mist whitens
Along the hidden river, where the evening smiles.
The trees are asleep, their shadows are longer and longer,
Melting blue in the tender twilight; above,
In a pallor, barred with lilac and ashen cloud,
Delicate as a spirit the young moon brightens,
And distant a bell intones the hour of peace,
Where roofs of the village, gray and red, cluster
In leafy dimness. Peace, old as the world!
The crickets shrilling in the high wet grass,
And gnats, clouding upon the frail wild roses,
Murmur of you: but hark! like a shudder upon the air,
Ominous and alien, knocking on the farther hills
As with airy hammers, the ghosts of terrible sound,--
Guns! From afar they are knocking on human hearts
Everywhere over the silent evening country,
Knocking with fear and dark presentiment. Only
The moon's beauty, where no life nor joy is,
Brightening softly and knowing nothing, has peace.

Fir, that on this moor austere,
Without kin or neighbour near,
Utterest now bleak winter's moan
As if its vext soul were thine own!
Unbefriended, placed like thee,
Ah, how lonely should I be!
But luminous midsummer nights,
Faintly filled with starry lights,
Morns miraculously clear
In the soft youth of the year,
Autumn mists and evenings chill,
Find thee proudly patient still:
None can mar thy steadfast mood,
Thy stanch and stately fortitude.
Had I no heart, to strive, to crave,
I too, perchance, could be as brave!
But oh, to crave and not be filled,
With passionate longing never stilled,
Desiring in the midst of bliss,
Thou, strong Tree, thou know'st not this:
The outstretched arms, the hungry eyes,
Gazing up to silent skies,
Beautiful, silent skies of June,
And radiant mystery of the moon!
To buy peace, we men forget:
But peace is in thy fibres set.
If thou art not stirred with joy,
Thou hast nothing that can cloy;
Without effort, without strife,
Art thyself, and liv'st thy life.
This solitude thou hast not known,
Both to be human and alone.

On the road to Ypres, on the long road,
Marching strong,
We'll sing a song of Ypres, of her glory
And her wrong.

Proud rose her towers in the old time,
Long ago.
Trees stood on her ramparts, and the water
Lay below.

Shattered are the towers into potsherds--
Jumbled stones.
Underneath the ashes that were rafters
Whiten bones.

Blood is in the cellar where the wine was,
On the floor.
Rats run on the pavement where the wives met
At the door.

But in Ypres there's an army that is biding,
Seen of none.
You'd never hear their tramp nor see their shadow
In the sun.

Thousands of the dead men there are waiting
Through the night,
Waiting for a bugle in the cold dawn
Blown for fight.

Listen when the bugle's calling Forward!
They'll be found,
Dead men, risen in battalions
From underground,

Charging with us home, and through the foemen
Driving fear
Swifter than the madness in a madman,
As they hear

Dead men ring the bells of Ypres
For a sign,
Hear the bells and fear them in the Hunland
Over Rhine!

I wandered between woods
On a grassy down, when still
Clouds hung after rain
Over hollow and hill;

The blossom--time was over,
The singing throats dumb,
And the year's coloured ripeness
Not yet come.

And all at unawares,
Surprising the stray sight,
Ran straight into my heart
Like a beam, delight.

Negligent weeds ravelled
The green edge of the copse,
Whitely, dimly, sparkling
With a million drops.

And sudden fancy feigned
What strange beauty would pass
Did but a shiver of wind
Tremble through the grass,

Shaking the poised, round drops
Spilled and softly rolled
A--glitter from the ragworth's
Roughened gold;

From the rusted scarlet
Of tall sorrel seed,
And fretted tufts, frost--gray,
Of the silver--weed,

And from purple--downed thistle
Towering dewy over
Yellow--cupped spurge
And the drenched, sweet clover.

But all were motionless:
Not one breath shed
Those little pale pearls
That an elf might thread

Under a fading moon
By an old thorn--tree
For the witching throat
Of Nimuë.

This year the grain is heavy--ripe;
The apple shows a ruddier stripe;
Never berries so profuse
Blackened with so sweet a juice
On brambly hedges, summer--dyed.
The yellow leaves begin to glide;
But Earth in careless lap--ful treasures
Pledge of over--brimming measures,
As if some rich unwonted zest
Stirred prodigal within her breast.
And now, while plenty's left uncared,
The fruit unplucked, the sickle spared,
Where men go forth to waste and spill,
Toiling to burn, destroy and kill,
Lo, also side by side with these
Beast--hungers, ravening miseries,
The heart of man has brought to birth
Splendours richer than his earth.
Now in the thunder--hour of fate
Each one is kinder to his mate;
The surly smile; the hard forbear;
There's help and hope for all to share;
And sudden visions of goodwill
Transcending all the scope of ill
Like a glory of rare weather
Link us in common light together,
A clearness of the cleansing sun,
Where none's alone and all are one;
And touching each a priceless pain
We find our own true hearts again.
No more the easy masks deceive:
We give, we dare, and we believe.

In the time of wild roses
As up Thames we travelled
Where 'mid water--weeds ravelled
The lily uncloses,

To his old shores the river
A new song was singing,
And young shoots were springing
On old roots for ever.

Dog--daisies were dancing,
And flags flamed in cluster,
On the dark stream a lustre
Now blurred and now glancing.

A tall reed down--weighing,
The sedge--warbler fluttered;
One sweet note he uttered,
Then left it soft--swaying.

By the bank's sandy hollow
My dipt oars went beating,
And past our bows fleeting
Blue--backed shone the swallow.

High woods, heron--haunted,
Rose, changed, as we rounded
Old hills greenly mounded,
To meadows enchanted;

A dream ever moulded
Afresh for our wonder,
Still opening asunder
For the stream many--folded;

Till sunset was rimming
The West with pale flushes;
Behind the black rushes
The last light was dimming;

And the lonely stream, hiding
Shy birds, grew more lonely,
And with us was only
The noise of our gliding.

In cloud of gray weather
The evening o'erdarkened.
In the stillness we hearkened;
Our hearts sang together.

Because thou camest, Love, to break
The strong mould of this world in two,
And of the senseless fragments take
And in thy mighty music make
A world more wondrous and more true,
Now my soul hath taken wings,
Newly bathed in light intense,
And purging off the film of sense,
Of its native glory sings.
And that inward vision, turning
Pomps of earth to vapour brief,
Sees as in a furnace burning
Time, a swiftly shrivelled leaf:
Sees the fortressed city fall
To a mound of nameless wall,
Shrining temple, columned porch,
Life--bought gems, and royal gold,
Shake like ashes from a torch;
Palaces, world--envied thrones,
Crumble down to dust as old
And idle as Behemoth's bones
On a frozen mountain--top.
I see the very mountains drop,
Wasting with their weight of stones
Swifter than a torrent slides,
Melted like the crimson cloud
Vanishing about their sides
When the morn has burst his shroud.

Love, Love, because thou didst destroy
So much, and madest so much vain,
I know what lives and shall remain,
I see amid Time's gorgeous wane
The dawn and promise of my joy.
O lift me thither, lift me higher!
I am not save in this desire,
Lost and living, fire in fire.

Never were towers so fair, so bold,
Passionately springing, arrogant towers!
Nor air so blue over roofs so old,
Nor on ancient walls so rare a gold,
When I found my love among the flowers.

O mighty Spirits, never to be stilled,
Whose glorious works concluded seem,
Yet in whom is a glory unfulfilled,
And still for us you build, you build,
What have you told her out of your dream?

She comes from shadow of streets below,
And surely, O Spirits, you were there,
Pacing among the shadows; lo,
In her eyes is a light, on her face a glow,
As she comes through a golden air.

Do you feel, do you breathe and throb again
In her bosom's beat and shining eyes,--
As an old chant heavy with world--old pain
Is lifted afresh in a splendid strain
On young lips, up to the skies?

My love is fair as a voice that sings,
In a scented garden of joyous flowers.
Do the old walls keep their buried things?
Yet the air is astir as with throbbing of wings
And heaven with the springing of the towers.

The hills lift a loneliness around;
But my love has a light about her head;
And as if they uttered names renowned,
Bells from the towers to the silences resound--
Voices of the youth of the dead!