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

The swift years follow
Each other, and hollow
As we grow older their voices sound;
Now dim behind us,
A sun to blind us
Once, yea sun-sweet o'er the charmed bright ground
Shines love, low-gleaming,
Like red sun dreaming
Behind dark forest or green far mound.

119

II

Still, still there quiver
The ripples of river,
The snow-white sheets of the sea-born foam;
The meadow-sweet lifted
By June-breeze, drifted
In soft bloom-powder, doth flutter and roam
The wood-glades deep
Where our dreams sleep,
Sleep, and abide in their fair old home.

III

There roses many,
For us not any,
Blossom; new lovers their bloom shall seek;
New face of maiden
With new love laden
Shall flame in the forest, and new lips speak
The same soft message
Of sweet calm presage;
New tides, white-footed, charge up the creek.

120

IV

Apollo and love
Yet hover above
The chaste green woodland; singers are there;
Birds in the larches,
And under the arches
Of grim grey tall trees, echo their fair
And yearly delight,
And gold through the night
Falls gently the flood of the wood-nymphs' hair.

V

These yet abide,
Though the years deride
Our love, our pleasure, our hopes of things
That pass swift-sweeping,
Their dim eyes weeping,
Now by us and chide us, pale uncrowned kings;
The old same splendour
Of meadow-sweet tender
In one white flush to the moist dale clings.

121

VI

Thou art not there
O woman, O fair
Long-lost loved spirit of early days;
Then oh where art thou
And where thy heart, thou
Who wanderest from me in flowerless ways
Where is no singing,
Yea, no voice ringing
For ever as ever with changeless praise.

VII

The years escape us,
The long months drape us
In wearisome mantle of deepening gloom;
Oh dost thou, lady,
Dream of the shady
Dell where we met when the rose was in bloom
And the white small lily
Starlike the hilly
Dear northland gladdened, with love's perfume?

122

VIII

Green were the alleys
Of woods, the valleys
Were bright with summer, the soft still streams
Dappled the meadows
With silver; the shadows
Of evening made more tender the dreams
The stars and the moon
Took charge of soon
Splendescent, and crowned with viewless gleams.

IX

Wonderful laughter
Of thine years after
Rang sweet within me, O girlish queen!
Wonderful gladness
That smote the sadness
Of all the black strange years between
Came on the heels of it,
Chimed in the peals of it,
As though no night of our sorrow had been.

123

X

Still by me I hear it,
Tender and clear it
Rings out, gentle and pure as of old;
Again I am near thee
And watch thee and hear thee,
Yea, in my hand thine hand I hold,
And the laughter deathless
Trembling and breathless
Keeps me, superb from the mouth of gold.

XI

Ten years between us
Serve but to screen us
The better from others, the closer to draw
Our hearts together,
As in wild weather
Souls cling more closely and ice-hearts thaw,
When some tossed vessel
Rises to wrestle
With thundering waves that follow and awe.

124

XII

How hath death revelled
'Mid locks dishevelled
Since at our feet the stream lisped low!
How many have left us,
Dark arrows have cleft us,
Arrows sped from the death-god's bow:
And though Apollo
The death-god follow,
Some sad seeds hath he of song to sow.

XIII

Thou art not altered,
Nor have I faltered
In my clear mission of endless song:
If death should seize us,
His cold touch freeze us,
Long ere a decade as sad, as long,
Pass once more by us,
He may not deny us
The past, its beauty, its love-voice strong.

125

XIV

Death cannot foil us
Wholly, despoil us
Of one sweet love-throb that e'er hath leapt
Through the bosom that bounded
As some foot sounded,
Dear to us, clear to us,—near to us stept;
The old woods yet the same for us
With song-flowers flame for us,
Though ten years' summers have dawned and have slept.

Feb. 13, 1880.