I’ll rise at midnight and I’ll rove
Up the hill and down the drove
That leads to the old unnoticed mill,
And think of one I used to love:
There stooping to the hunching wall
I’ll stare into the rush of stars
Or bubbles that the waterfall
Brings forth and breaks in ceaseless wars.
The shelving hills have made a fourm
Where the mill holdings shelter warm,
And here I came with one I loved
To watch the seething millions swarm.
But long ago she grew a ghost
Though walking with me every day;
Even when her beauty burned me most
She to a spectre dimmed away—
Until though cheeks all morning-bright
And black eyes gleaming life’s delight
And singing voice dwelt in my sense,
Herself paled on my inward sight.
She grew one whom deep waters glassed.
Then in dismay I hid from her,
And lone by talking brooks at last
I found a Love still lovelier.
O lost in tortured days of France!
Yet still the moment comes like chance
Born in the stirring midnight’s sigh
Or in the wild wet sunset’s glance:
And how I know not but this stream
Still sounds like vision’s voice, and still
I watch with Love the bubbles gleam,
I walk with Love beside the mill.
The heavens are thralled with cloud, yet gray
Half-moonlight swims the fields till day,
The stubbled fields, the bleaching woods;—
Even this bleak hour is stolen away
By this shy water falling low,
And calling low the whole night through,
And calling back the long ago
And richest world I ever knew.
The hop-kiln fingers cobweb-white
With discord dim turned left and right,
And when the wind was south and small
The sea’s far whisper drowsed the night;
Scarce more than mantling ivy’s voice
That in the tumbling water trailed.
Love’s spirit called me to rejoice
When she to nothingness had paled:
For Love the daffodils shone here
In grass the greenest of the year,
Daffodils seemed the sunset lights
And silver birches budded clear:
And all from east to west there strode
Great shafted clouds in argent air,
The shining chariot-wheels of God,
And still Love’s moment sees them there.
THE SCYTHE
A thick hot haze had choked the valley grounds
Long since, the dogday sun had gone his rounds
Like a dull coal half lit with sulky heat;
And leas were iron, ponds were clay, fierce beat
The blackening flies round moody cattle’s eyes.
Wasps on the mudbanks seemed a hornet’s size,
That on the dead roach battened. The plough’s increase
Stood under a curse.
Behold, the far release!
Old wisdom breathless at her cottage door
‘Sounds of abundance’ mused, and heard the roar
Of marshalled armies in the silent air,
And thought Elisha stood beside her there,
And clacking reckoned ere the next nightfall
She’d turn the looking-glasses to the wall.