Did I, when silence awed the winter woods,
And giant shadows trenched the frosty ground
From bole and limb whose vault held in the night,
Love to behold the full-grown magic moon
Cast splendour glittering on the silver rime? 
   Yes; mid the notes and emerald flush of spring,
With swollen brooks exulting through the fields,
And rainy wind that in an ocean-roar
Bore down the forest tops the livelong day,
Through straggling gleams, through random wafts of shade,
Rejoicingly I trod the glistening paths. 
   Yes, I it was, in dreamy golden haze,
Beheld poor men hard toiling all the hours,
And thought them happier than the birds that sang,
That sang and trilled in gurgles of delight.

Dallying I loitered in the golden time
Long after the loved nightingale had ceased
To pour his passionate impulse over plains
Of shivering corn, now ripened into wealth;
When sunset-coloured fruit in orchard crofts
Hung slowly mellowing under azure noons;
And, hushed in darkened leaves, the dreaming air
Swelled gently to a whispering sound, and died. 
With joy I wandered on from knoll to knoll
And lost in marvel, drank the lisping winds,
The fairy winds that lisped me all was good. 
Nor marked I when the clogged horizon flew
In dusky vapour crowding up the skies;
But woke anon when deathlike pallor thrown
From wrathful drift laid the whole land in gloom;
When war, enormous war, broke through the heavens,
In sheets and streaking fire and thunderous clap,
With shock on shock, that crushed the ripened corn,
And swept the piled up midsummer to ruin. 
That wrenched great timbers of a thousand years,
Shaking the strong foundations of the land. 
And when at last the terrible tempest fell,
Wide heaven was emptied of the sun and stars,
And void of more than all their light to me.

Like fretted me to hollow weariness
When my sweet Dove of Paradise went off,
Ascending, glory-guarded, into heaven. 
Then feeding on the past, and fondling death,
I grew in livid horror:  soon had grown,
By foul self cankered, to a charnel ghoule,
Had not Almighty God, gracious in love,
Permitted her own presence once again,
Mysterious as a vision, yet once more
To come a shining warning and reveal
Athwart my path unfathomable gulfs,
And kindle hope wherewith I still might gain
The hills that shine for ever to the blessed.

Much striving has been mine since those events
Ruled the pulsation of my daily life: 
And now they are a vulgar chronicle,
And gossiped over by the rudest tongues. 
A haunting song of old felicities
Lured me, scarce consciously, down here to muse
Upon my shattered dreams; safe from the roar
Of interests in our grim metropolis,
The beating heart of England and the world. 
Not seen by me, since on that wondrous night
Her consolation came into my soul;
Yet here again I stand beside her tomb—­
And here I muse, more wise and not so sad.