But thou, who soundest in my tune and rhyme,
Hast tones I wake not, in thy land and sea,
Loveliness not for me, secrets from me,
Thoughts for another, and another time.
And as, the west wind passed, the south wind alters
His intimate sweet things, his hues of noon,
The voices of his waves, sound of his pine,
The meanings of his lost heart,—this thought falters
In my short song—‘Another bard shall tune
Thee, my one Lyre, to other songs than mine.’
THE POET TO HIS CHILDHOOD
In my thought I see you stand with a path on either hand,
—Hills that look into the sun, and there a river’d meadow-land.
And your lost voice with the things that it decreed across me thrills,
When you thought, and chose the hills.
‘If it prove a life of pain, greater have I judged the gain.
With a singing soul for music’s sake, I climb and meet the rain,
And I choose, whilst I am calm, my thought and labouring to be
Unconsoled by sympathy.’
But how dared you use me so? For you bring my ripe years low
To your child’s whim and a destiny your child-soul could not know.
And that small voice legislating I revolt against, with tears.
But you mark not, through the years.
‘To the mountain leads my way. If the plains are green to-day,
These my barren hills are flushing faintly, strangely, in the May,
With the presence of the Spring amongst the smallest flowers that grow.’
But the summer in the snow?
Do you know, who are so bold, how in sooth the rule will hold,
Settled by a wayward child’s ideal at some ten years old?
—How the human arms you slip from, thoughts and love you stay not for,
Will not open to you more?
You were rash then, little child, for the skies with storms are wild,
And you faced the dim horizon with its whirl of mists, and smiled,
Climbed a little higher, lonelier, in the solitary sun,
To feel how the winds came on.