Did your eyes watch the mystic sunset splendours Through evenings of old summers, slow of parting,-- Wistful while loveliest gains and fair surrenders Hallow’d the West,--till tremulous tears came starting?
Did your soul wing her way on noiseless pinion Through lucid fields of air, and penetrated With light and silence roam the wide dominion Where Day and Dusk embrace,--serene, unmated?
And they are past the shining hours and tender, And snows are fallen between, and winds are driven? Nay, for I find across your face the splendour, And in your wings the central winds of heaven.
They reach me, those lost sunsets. Undivining Your own high mysteries you pause and ponder; See, in my eyes the vanished light is shining, Feel, through what spaces of clear heaven I wander!
Let them go by--the heats, the doubts, the strife; I can sit here and care not for them now, Dreaming beside the glimmering wave of life Once more,--I know not how.
There is a murmur in my heart, I hear Faint, O so faint, some air I used to sing; It stirs my sense; and odours dim and dear The meadow-breezes bring.
Just this way did the quiet twilights fade Over the fields and happy homes of men, While one bird sang as now, piercing the shade, Long since,--I know not when.
Ah, do not tell me what they mean, The tremulous brook, the scarcely stirred June leaves, the hum of things unseen, This sovran bird.
Do they say things so deep, and rare, And perfect? I can only tell That they are happy, and can bear Such ignorance well;
Feeding on all things said and sung From hour to hour in this high wood Articulate in a strange, sweet tongue Not understood.
A noise of swarming thoughts, A muster of dim cares, a foil’d intent, With plots and plans, and counterplans and plots; And thus along the city’s edges grey Unmindful of the darkening autumn day With a droop’d head I went.
My face rose,--through what spell?-- Not hoping anything from twilight dumb: One star possessed her heaven. Oh! all grew well Because of thee, and thy serene estate: Silence ... I let thy beauty make me great; What though the black night come.
Master, they argued fast concerning Thee, Proved what Thou art, denied what Thou art not, Till brows were on the fret, and eyes grew hot, And lip and chin were thrust out eagerly; Then through the temple-door I slipped to free My soul from secret ache in solitude, And sought this brook, and by the brookside stood The world’s Light, and the Light and Life of me. It is enough, O Master, speak no word! The stream speaks, and the endurance of the sky Outpasses speech: I seek not to discern Even what smiles for me Thy lips have stirred; Only in Thy hand still let my hand lie, And let the musing soul within me burn.
