The Poetical Works of George Barlow :: :: University of Virginia Library

Ages and ages since my boyhood woke from slumber
And all the hills grew bright
And flowers no man can name, nor mortal heart can number,
Gleamed in the gorgeous morning light.

The sunrise shone around. And thou the spirit of morning,
O sweet first love, wast there:
And thou and I alone watched the green hills adorning
Their fresh robes and their sun-kissed hair.

The first sweet light of dawn fell o'er the ocean hollows
And gilded the waves' way:
And o'er the water danced and glanced the white sea-swallows,
And our hearts were as winged as they.

All things were then in front. Life's golden gateway glittered
In the dawn's golden rays.
Ah! one could never have dreamed that woodland paths were littered
Ever with damp autumnal strays!

I thought that I would sing thy beauty and thy glory,
O far first love of mine!
I knew not what snowfields, waste, trackless, sunless, hoary,
Lay on the wild horizon-line!

And now that I have sung, and thirteen years have fluttered
Their weary wings away,
Is there one soft look gained through all that I have uttered,—
Hast thou one word of love to say?

Have thirteen years of song no voices and no pinions
To reach and cry to thee?
Hast thou no yearning still for our old royal dominions
Of deep-blue sky and bluer sea?

Is love of nothing worth now that the love is longer
And of more passionate might?
Now that the mounting sun of riper age flames stronger,
Are the old sun-kissed hills less bright?

If I have crowned thy brow with leaves time may not wither
For all his wayward will,
Wilt thou not, once at least, for old love's sake turn hither,
Thy singer's heart once more to thrill?

Wilt thou not look this way, that once again the splendour
Of morning over me
May flash?—as ever it flashed when thou, first love, wast tender
By the old ever-tender sea.

Oct. 23, 1882.

II. SUNSET

Ah!—Here I stand and dream, and sunset's red dominions
Burn, high before my sight.
Who am I that my thought should stretch young eager pinions
Towards the far golden morning-light?

Between me and the past lie fields on fields of sorrow:
Yet, brown-eyed maiden, thee
I have to-day—and perhaps to-morrow,—and to-morrow,—
And then the dark night, and the sea.

Once more before my death, old dreams and thoughts romantic
Have leaped up high again:
And passion's wind with laugh half silver-sweet, half frantic,
Has swept around the shores of pain.

I weary with sad days and sick at heart with climbing
Far past youth's sunlit dells
Have sought anew for thee the old streams silver-chiming
And sought for thee the haunted fells.

Yes: I have found a love,—and yet a fair white sister
In her, too, I have found.
I felt my soul awake when my glad lips had kissed her,
With more than common passion crowned.

For ever it is the soul that gives all joy to passion:—
The slightest gift is sweet
If given in soulful holy virginal pure fashion;
The red lips need not even meet.

Beyond all love, the love that loves just for the pleasure
Of giving love away:
And this,—the love of God,—can never lose its treasure
Nor see joy's rose wings turn to grey.

Beyond all love the love that, full of deepest yearning,
Can still that yearning deep,
And wait,—though far within the great soul-fires are burning
And through the soul wild longings leap.

This is the love that wins. And though to mortal seeming
It win not here at all;
Though half its triumph seem to careless eyes mere dreaming,
Mere dallying while life's blossoms fall;

Yet still I say that this, the love of soul, prevaileth,
And no love else at last:
Is all afire with joy when every faint love paleth,—
Wins, when all lesser loves are past.

Oct. 23, 1882.