XXXIII.
THE GREETING.
(A FRAGMENT.)
1
My poet-thoughts, that long lay dead,
Are re-arisen; and must be fed
With the delight of outward beauty,
That they may freshly pay sweet duty
To God and skies and flowers and birds,
With all the hoarded wealth of words;
And give to Heaven and to Earth
Their resurrection, as their birth!
2
Lo! every wave of that vast Sea
Like a glad thing leaps to me;
Welcoming, each to the other,
The advent of their mortal brother;
Who hath long been toss'd, as they,
On a dim and stormy way;
Now meeting on the self-same shore,
To part, and wander as before.
3
The bare boughs greet me with oblations
Of dry leaves; whence contemplations
Rise, like ghosts of youth and grace,
Met, in winter's gathering-place,
With the ancient and the rotten;
All their witchery forgotten:
Ghosts, that still our ways condemn;
Till we join decay—and them.
4
Upon the Sea and on the cliff
There rests a glory fugitive
Of sunbeams, lying like the grace
Of bland smiles on a wrinkled face:
And on the sailing grey-gull's wing
Strange shades the clouds are scattering:
'Tis now a white speck in the black,
And now a stain on the white rack!
5
O! every thing to things, I ween,
The light in which those things are seen!
[OMITTED]
Now, God be praised for all he gives!—
His creature, that was dead, re-lives.
