Remember how, the winter through,
While all the ways were choked with mire,
Half-maddened at the rain, we two
Have nestled closer to the fire,
And talk’d of all that should be done
When April brought us back the sun,
What gardens white with butterflies,
What soft green nooks of budded heather,
What moorlands open to the skies,
We two would scour together!
II.
And now the month comes round again!
Cool interchange of genial hours,
Soft gleams of sunlight, streams of rain,
Have starred the meadow-lands with flowers,
And in the orchards on the hills
The grass is gold with daffodils,
And we have wander’d, hand in hand,
Where sea below and sky above
Seem narrowing to a strip of land
The pathway that we love!
III.
Our path looks out on the wide sea,
And knows not of the land; we sit
For hours in silent reverie,
To watch the sea, and pulse with it;
Its deep monotonous refrain
Brings melancholy, almost pain:
We scarcely wish to speak or move,
But just to feel each other there,
And sense of presence is like love,
And silence more than prayer.
IV.
Sharp round the steep hill’s utmost line
It winds, and, just below, the grass
Sinks with tumultuous incline
To where the rock-pools shine like glass;
The tufts of thrift can drink their fill
Of sea-wind on this rugged hill,
And all the herbage, toss’d and blown,
Is stain’d with salt and crush’d with wind,
Save where behind some boulder-stone
A harbour flowers may find.
V.
The bright sea sparkles, sunbeam-kiss’d,
And o’er its face such breezes float
As lightly turn to amethyst
The pearl-grey of a ring-dove’s throat;
Thus stirr’d and ruffled, shines anew
The radiant plain of changing hue,
So gentle, that the eye divines
No reason why the foam should fall
So loudly, in such serried lines,
Against the dark rock-wall.