Our golden cord! our soft, pursuing flame From friendship’s altar fire! How proudly we would pluck and tame The dimpling clusters, mutinously gay! How swiftly they were sent Far, far away On journeys wide, By sea and continent, Green miles and blue leagues over, From each of us to each, That so our hearts might reach, And touch within the yellow clover, Love’s letter to be glad about Like sunshine when it came!
My sorrow asks no healing; it is love; Let love then make me brave To bear the keen hurts of This careless summertide, Ay, of our own poor flower, Changed with our fatal hour, For all its sunshine vanished when you died; Only white clover blossoms on your grave.
We long for her, we yearn for her— Yes, ardently we yearn For her return. Recalling those beloved days (Days intimate with ways Of friends so near to us And life so dear to us), We yearn unspeakably for her return.
And come she must… Yet while we trust We soon may see the passing of this agony Which makes intrusive years still seem A fearsome dream, We know that when she comes She really comes not back again.
She’ll come in other guise And under fairer skies— And yet to bitter pain!
That day she went away Our homes with laughing youth were filled. Where then was happiness Is now distress, The laughter stilled; For when she left Youth followed her— We stay bereft.
So all our golden joy For what she brings Must carry gray alloy: The sorrow that she can not lay, The mysery that she can not stay— While all the gladsome songs she sings Must bear for undertones Old sighs and echoed moans.
As they who go away In flush of youth May come quite worn and gray And bringing naught but ruth— So, when the strife shall cease, And when she comes at last, When all the armies vast Shall at her feet Kneel down to greet Thrice welcome Peace, This world will be so changed (So many dear ones dead, So many friends estranged, So many blessings fled, So many wonted ways forever barred, So many coming days forever marred) That then She truly comes not back again— She, the Peace we knew.
Yet how we long for her! How ardently we yearn For her return!
I love to watch the world from here, for all The numberless living portraits that are drawn Upon the mind. Far over is the sea, Fronting the sand, a few great yellow dunes, A salt marsh stumbling after, rank and green, With brackish gullies wandering in between, All this from the hill. And more: a clump of dwarfed and twisted cedars, Sentinels over the marsh, and bright with the sun A field of daises wandering in the wind As though a hidden serpent glided through, A broken wall, a new-plowed field, and then The dusty road and the abodes of men Surrounding the hill. How small the enclosure is wherein there lives Each phase and passion of life, the distant sail Dips in the limpid bosom of the sea, From that far place to where in state the turf Raises a throne for me upon the hill, Each little love and lust of a living thing Can thus be compassed in a rainbow ring And seen from the hill.