I saw, unsighting:  her heart
     I saw, and the home of her love
     There printed, mournfully rent: 
     Her ebbing adieu, her adieu,
     And the stride of the Shadow athwart. 
     For one of our Autumns there! . . . 
     Straight as the flight of a dove
     We went, swift winging we went. 
     We trod solid ground, we breathed air,
     The heavens were unbroken.  Break they,
     The word of the world is adieu: 
     Her word:  and the torrents are round,
     The jawed wolf-waters of prey. 
     We stand upon isles, who stand: 
     A Shadow before us, and back,
     A phantom the habited land. 
     We may cry to the Sunderer, spare
     That dearest! he loosens his pack. 
     Arrows we breathe, not air. 
     The memories tenderly bound
     To us are a drifting crew,
     Amid grey-gapped waters for ground. 
     Alone do we stand, each one,
     Till rootless as they we strew
     Those deeps of the corse-like stare
     At a foreign and stony sun.

     Eyes had I but for the scene
     Of my circle, what neighbourly grew. 
     If haply no finger lay out
     To the figures of days that had been,
     I gathered my herb, and endured;
     My old cloak wrapped me about. 
     Unfooted was ground-ivy blue,
     Whose rustic shrewd odour allured
     In Spring’s fresh of morning:  unseen
     Her favourite wood-sorrel bell
     As yet, though the leaves’ green floor
     Awaited their flower, that would tell
     Of a red-veined moist yestreen,
     With its droop and the hues it wore,
     When we two stood overnight
     One, in the dark van-glow
     On our hill-top, seeing beneath
     Our household’s twinkle of light
     Through spruce-boughs, gem of a wreath.

     Budding, the service-tree, white
     Almost as whitebeam, threw,
     From the under of leaf upright,
     Flecks like a showering snow
     On the flame-shaped junipers green,
     On the sombre mounds of the yew. 
     Like silvery tapers bright
     By a solemn cathedral screen,
     They glistened to closer view. 
     Turf for a rooks’ revel striped
     Pleased those devourers astute. 
     Chorister blackbird and thrush
     Together or alternate piped;
     A free-hearted harmony large,
     With meaning for man, for brute,
     When the primitive forces are brimmed. 
     Like featherings hither and yon
     Of aery tree-twigs over marge,
     To the comb of the winds, untrimmed,
     Their measure is found in the vast. 
     Grief heard them, and stepped her way on. 
     She has but a narrow embrace. 
     Distrustful of hearing she passed. 
     They piped her young Earth’s Bacchic rout;
     The race, and the prize of the race;
     Earth’s lustihead pressing to sprout.