With never-ending strain
Of anguish, to recapture
That light which is for ever
Lost with its living train
Of glories robed in rapture!
The twilight time encroaches
About the lonesome air,
Laden with long reproaches
And faint with old despair.
The starlight droppeth o'er me
All night, like chilly tears.
The night-wind talketh to me,
With noises in my ears.
The moonlight searcheth through me
Like memories of lost years.
The great midnight before me
Gapeth with vast fears.

3.

In the pure, the early time,
In the morning whiteness,
Ere the bee in the budded thyme
Felt the flowing brightness
On his golden-girded back,
When the crystal sky hung clear
Against the upland track
Of the startled mountain deer,
O the dews divine that wet us,
Frolic fancies to beget us
And courageous-hearted cheer,
Mid the dells of high Hymettus
In the summer-sweeten'd year!
Up the love lawns amber-lighted,
Down the placid meadow places,
Roaming, hand in hand united,
With the sunrise on our faces!
And the blue Eubœan bay
Murmur'd to us in his sleep,
And Cepisus far away,
Winding softly to the deep,
Like a glad thought thro' the dream
Of a happy man, did seem
To glance ever,
Gleam, and quiver
With a radiant meaning under many a meadow-creek,
While the blithe wind from the water
Heaved the hair of Herse's daughter
Into brightness round the rosy-bloomed beauty of
her cheek.

4.

Surely, in that sweet time
It never was the lark
That with dewy wing,
Out o' the dappled dark
Did delight to spring
Like a bounding dart
Up the blue air, and run
Around the rising sun,
And in the high light sing
His love-song sublime
Loudly echoing.
Nay, it was no bird
'Twas the strong joy of my heart
That mounted in the morn
To make his music heard
Before the day was born.
And in that sweet time, surely
'Twas not the nightingale,
When silver moonlight purely
Search'd all the purple vale,
That, lock'd in leaves, securely
Made his wild note prevail
All the warm night long.
No! no! no nightingale
Sung ever joy so strong!
'Twas the bliss within my breast
That all night would not rest
From its own throbbing springs of self-inspired
song.
It was thy presence Procris: the inexpressible
sweetness
Of the consciousness of thee,
In that sweet time,
That at did at morn and even
Trance both earth and heaven
With music never given
To any mortal rhyme;
Flooding to completeness
All sweet things that be
Within the spirit's witness:
Earth and sky and sea
Filling with rich fitness
To the restless joy on me,
And pouring perfect gladness in perpetual melody.

5.

But O the sudden, strange,
And unendurable change!
O days on days that range
From sorrow down to sorrow with an ever-growing grief,
The bleak burthen of the Past!
O fixedness of fate
In yet ever fleeting state!
O falsehood known too late!
And O remorse that bringest tears which cannot
bring relief
To the wretchedness thou hast!
In the violet-eyèd green
Let not any dews be seen
Among the vales Ætolian,
Save of my deep weeping!
Nor any other sound
Than of my grief around
The high night's æolian
Along the lone Leucadian headlands sweeping,
And moaning evermore
About the western shore
To that bright land beyond the west, where Procris
sweet is sleeping!
Haste, Father Helios, haste!
Finish these days disgraced,
Emptied, and meaningless.
Quench, with yon quivering light,
This too-long questioning sight
That nothing answers save endured distress!
Delay no longer, Father, from thy rest,
Thou goest grandly, with a greatening zest,
And gravely, down where heaven is silentest
Across the waters! Take me with thee, me
Thy son. For somewhere in the wondrous west.
Mid realms of gold remember'd half, half guest,
To me 'twas phophesied that I should be
Free'd from a form my spirit spurns. The crest
Of yon tall peak now flares purpureal,
And even now methinks that I hear fall
From far, a music, faint, funereal.
To me, to me, my long lost kindred call.
Where slowly ope the solemn porches all,