SCENE VI.
A Room in London. Walter reading from a manuscript.
My head is grey, my blood is young,
Red-leaping in my veins,
The spring doth stir my spirit yet
To seek the cloistered violet,
The primrose in the lanes.
In heart I am a very boy,
Haunting the woods, the waterfalls,
The ivies on grey castle-walls;
Weeping in silent joy
When the broad sun goes down the west,
Or trembling o'er a sparrow's nest.
The world might laugh were I to tell
What most my old age cheers,—
Mem'ries of stars and crescent moons,
Of nutting strolls through autumn noons,
Rainbows 'mong April's tears.
But chief, to live that hour again,
When first I stood on sea-beach old,
First heard the voice, first saw out-rolled
The glory of the main.
Many rich draughts hath Memory,
The Soul's cup-bearer, brought to me.
I saw a garden in my strolls,
A lovely place, I ween,
With rows of vermeil-blossomed trees,
With flowers, with slumb'rous haunts of bees,
With summer-house of green.
A peacock perched upon a dial,
In the sun's face he did unclose
His train superb with eyes and glows,
To dare the sun to trial.
A child sat in a shady place,
A shower of ringlets round her face.
She sat on shaven plot of grass,
With earnest face, and weaving
Lilies white and freakèd pansies
Into quaint delicious fancies,
Then, on a sudden leaving
Her floral wreath, she would upspring
With silver shouts and ardent eyes,
To chase the yellow butterflies,
Making the garden ring;
Then gravely pace the scented walk,
Soothing her doll with childish talk.
And being, as I said before,
An old man who could find
A boundless joy beneath the skies,
And in the light of human eyes,
And in the blowing wind,
There, daily were my footsteps turned,
Through the long spring, until the peach
Was drooping full-juiced in my reach.—
Each day my old heart yearned
To look upon that child so fair,
That infant in her golden hair.
In this green lovely world of ours
I have had many pets,
Two are still leaping in the sun,
Three are married; that dearest one
Is 'neath the violets.
I gazèd till my heart grew wild,
To fold her in my warm caresses,
Clasp her showers of golden tresses,—
Oh, dreamy-eyèd child!
O Child of Beauty! still thou art
A sunbeam in this lonely heart.
When autumn eves grew chill and rainy,
England left I for the Ganges;
I couched 'mong groves of cedar-trees,
Blue lakes, and slumb'rous palaces,
Crossed the snows of mountain-ranges,
Watched the set of old Orion,
Saw wild flocks and wild-eyed shepherds,
Princes charioted by leopards,
In the desert met the lion,
The mad sun above us glaring,—
Child! for thee I still was caring.
Home returned from realms barbaric,
By the shores of Loch Lubnaig,
A dear friend and I were walking
('Twas the Sabbath), we were talking
Of dreams and feelings vague;
We pausèd by a place of graves,
Scarcely a word was 'twixt us given,
Silent the earth, silent the heaven,
No murmur of the waves,
The awèd Loch lay black and still
In the black shadow of the hill.
We loosed the gate and wandered in,
When the sun eternal
Was sudden blanched with amethyst,
As if a thick and purple mist
Dusked his brows supernal.
Soon like a god in mortal throes,
City, hill, and sea, he dips
In the death-hues of eclipse;
Mightier his anguish grows,
Till he hung black, with ring intense,
The wreck of his magnificence.
Above the earth's cold face he hung
With a pale ring of glory,
Like that which cunning limners paint
Around the forehead of a saint,
Or brow of martyr hoary.
And sitting there I could but choose,—
That blind and stricken sun aboon,
Stars shuddering through the ghostly noon,
'Mong the thick-falling dews,—
To tell, with features pale and wild,
About that Garden and that Child.