And we with singing cheer’d the way,
And crown’d with all the season lent,
From April on to April went,
And glad at heart from May to May:
But where the path we walk’d began
To slant the fifth autumnal slope,
As we descended following Hope,
There sat the Shadow fear’d of man;
Who broke our fair companionship,
And spread his mantle dark and cold;
And wrapped thee formless in the fold,
And dull’d the murmur on thy lip;
And bore thee where I could not see
Nor follow, tho’ I walk in haste;
And think that, somewhere in the waste,
The Shadow sits and waits for me.
XXIII
Now, sometimes in my sorrow shut,
Or breaking into song by fits;
Alone, alone, to where he sits,
The Shadow cloak’d from head to foot
Who keeps the keys of all the creeds,
I wander, often falling lame,
And looking back to whence I came,
Or on to where the pathway leads;
And crying, how changed from where it ran
Thro’ lands where not a leaf was dumb;
But all the lavish hills would hum
The murmur of a happy Pan:
When each by turns was guide to each,
And Fancy light from Fancy caught,
And Thought leapt out to wed with Thought,
Ere thought could wed itself with Speech:
And all we met was fair and good,
And all was good that Time could bring,
And all the secret of the Spring
Moved in the chambers of the blood: