Hast thou so much withstood, Tempest-despising tree, That now thy hollow wood Stiffens disdainfully Against the soft spring airs and soft spring rain, Knowing too well that winter comes again?
Now into hearts long empty of the sun The morning comes again with golden light And all the shades of the half-dusk are done And all the crevices are suddenly bright. So gradually had love lain down to sleep, We knew it not; but when we saw his head Pillowed and sunken in a trance so deep We whispered shuddering that he was dead. Then you like Psyche took the light and leant Over the monster lying in his place, Daring, despairing, trembling as you bent ... But love raised up his new-awakening face And into our hearts long empty of the sun We felt the sky-distilled bright liquor run.
When love comes back that went in mist and cloud He comes triumphant in his pomp and power; Voices that muttered long are glad and loud To mark the sweetness of the sudden hour. How could we live so long in that half-light? That opiate shadow, where the deadened nerves So soon forget how hills and winds are bright, That drugged and sleepy dusk, that only serves With false shades to conceal the emptiness Of hearts whence love has stolen unawares, Where creeping doubts and dumb, dull sorrows press And weariness with blind eyes gapes and stares. This was our state, but now a happy song Rings through our inner sunlight all day long.
When that I lay in a mute agony, I nothing saw nor heard nor felt nor thought, The inner self, the quintessential me, In that blind hour beyond all sense was brought Hard against pain. I had no body, no mind, Nought but the point that suffers joy or loss, No eyes in sudden blackness to be blind, No brain for swift regrets to run across. But when you touched me, when your hot tears fell, The point that had been nothing else but pain Changed into rapture by a miracle, In which all raptures known before were vain. Thus loss which bared the utmost shivering nerve For joy's precursor in the heart did serve.
Over this hill the high clouds float all day And trail their long, soft shadows on the grass, And now above the meadows make delay And now with regular, swift motion pass. Now comes a threatening drift from the south-west, In smoky colours drest, That spills far out upon the chequered plain Its burden of dark rain; Then hard behind a stately galleon Sails onward with its piled and carven towers Stiff sculptured like a heap of marble flowers, Rigid, unaltering, a miracle Of moulded surfaces, whereon the light Shines steadily, intolerably bright; Now on a livelier wind a wandering bell Of delicate vapour comes, invisibly hung, Like feathers from the seeding thistle flung, And saunters wantonly far out of sight. O God, who fill'st with shifting imagery The blue page of the sky, Thus writ'st thou also, with as vague a pen, In the immenser hearts of dreaming men.