But I forget the parting words she said,
So much they thrilled the all-attentive
soul;
For one short moment human heart and head
May bear such bliss—its present
is the whole:
I had that present, till in whispers fell
With parting gesture her subdued farewell.
Farewell! she said, in act to turn away,
But stood a moment yet to dry her tears,
And suffered my enfolding arm to stay
The time of her departure. O ye years
That intervene betwixt that day and this!
You all received your hue from that keen pain and
bliss.
O mingled pain and bliss! O pain to break
At once from happiness so lately found,
And four long years to feel for her sweet sake
The incompleteness of all sight and sound!
But bliss to cross once more the foaming brine—
O bliss to come again and make her mine!
I cannot—O, I cannot more recall!
But I will soothe my troubled thoughts
to rest
With musing over journeyings wide, and all
Observance of this active-humored west,
And swarming cities steeped in eastern day,
With swarthy tribes in gold and striped array.
I turn away from these, and straight there will succeed
(Shifting and changing at the restless
will),
Imbedded in some deep Circassian mead,
White wagon-tilts, and flocks that eat
their fill
Unseen above, while comely shepherds pass,
And scarcely show their heads above the grass.
—The red Sahara in an angry glow,
With amber fogs, across its hollows trailed
Long strings of camels, gloomy-eyed and slow,
And women on their necks, from gazers
veiled,
And sun-swart guides who toil across the sand
To groves of date-trees on the watered land.
Again—the brown sails of an Arab boat,
Flapping by night upon a glassy sea,
Whereon the moon and planets seem to float,
More bright of hue than they were wont
to be,
While shooting-stars rain down with crackling sound,
And, thick as swarming locusts, drop to ground.
Or far into the heat among the sands
The gembok nations, snuffing up the wind,
Drawn by the scent of water—and the bands
Of tawny-bearded lions pacing, blind
With the sun-dazzle in their midst, opprest
With prey, and spiritless for lack of rest!
What more? Old Lebanon, the frosty-browed,
Setting his feet among oil-olive trees,
Heaving his bare brown shoulder through a cloud;
And after, grassy Carmel, purple seas,
Flattering his dreams and echoing in his rocks,
Soft as the bleating of his thousand flocks.
Enough: how vain this thinking to beguile,
With recollected scenes, an aching breast!
Did not I, journeying, muse on her the while?
Ah, yes! for every landscape comes impressed—
Ay, written on, as by an iron pen—
With the same thought I nursed about her then.
Therefore let memory turn again to home;
Feel, as of old, the joy of drawing near;
Watch the green breakers and the wind-tossed foam,
And see the land-fog break, dissolve,
and clear;
Then think a skylark’s voice far sweeter sound
Than ever thrilled but over English ground;