Where’er I go,
His voice is in the summer rain,
His footprints on the snow.
And while October turns to gold,
I dream that April buds unfold,
Ah tell me will the Spring-time bring
The Love that went before the Spring?
The Shepherd’s Song I have heard him say he was as well pleased with as with any of his later and more ambitious verse; but it is curious to note that, quite unconsciously, he repeated the line “But now the strings have all one tone” in the Lute Song, written nearly thirty years after, for The Beauty Stone, an opera done in conjunction with Sir Arthur Pinero to Sir Arthur Sullivan’s music.
The book of The Beauty Stone was published, but I quote the Lute Song for those who did not know it.