How rich the nodding spray
Of pale green leaves that made the sapphire deep
A background to the dreams of that brief sleep
We called our life when heaven was far away.
How strange would be the sight
Of the little towns and twisted streets again,
Where all the hurrying works and ways of men
Would seem a children's game for our delight.
What boundless heaven could give
This joy in the strait austere restraints of earth,
Whereof the dead have felt the immortal dearth
Who look upon God's face and cannot live?
Our ghosts would clutch at flowers
As drowning men at straws, for fear the sea
Should sweep them back to God's Eternity,
Still clinging to the day that once was ours.
No more with fevered brain
Plunging across the gulfs of Space and Time
Would we revisit this our earthly clime
We two, if we could ever come again;
Not as we came of old,
But reverencing the flesh we now despise
And gazing out with consecrated eyes,
Each of us glad of the other's hand to hold.
So we should wander nigh
Our mortal home, and see its little roof
Keeping the deep eternal night aloof
And yielding us a refuge from the sky.
We should steal in, once more,
Under the cloudy lilac at the gate,
Up the walled garden, then with hearts elate
Forget the stars and close our cottage door.
Oh then, as children use
To make themselves a little hiding-place,
We would rejoice in narrowness of space,
And God should give us nothing more to lose.
How good it all would seem
To souls that from the æonian ebb and flow
Came down to hear once more the to and fro
Swing o' the clock dictate its hourly theme.