(I)
It may be on a quiet mountaintop,
Or in a valley folded among hills
You take your path, and often you will stop
To hear the pleasant chatter of the rills,
The piping of a wind in branches green,
The murmuring of widely-lifted spray
As long boughs swing
And hear the twittering
Of drowsy birds when the great sun is seen
Climbing the steep horizon to the day.
The lovely moon trailing her silver dress
By quiet waters. Each living star
Moving apart in holy quietness,
Sphere over golden sphere moving afar,
These I can see;
And the unquiet zone
Rolling in snow along the edge of sight.
The world is very fair, and I am free
To see its beauty and to be
In solitude, and quite forget, and quite
Lose out of memory all I have known
Of everything but this.
(2)
Straying apart in sad and mournful way,
Alone, or with my heart for company.
Keeping the tone of a dejected day
And a bewilderment that came to me;
I said — The Spring
Will never come again, and there is end
Of everything.
Day after day
The sap will ebb away from the great tree,
And when the sap is gone
Then piteously
She tumbles to the clay:
And we say only — Such a one
Had pleasant shade, but there is
end of her. —
And you, and even you, the year
Will drain and dry, and you will disappear.
Then to my heart there came so wild a stir.
And such great pity and astonishment,
And such a start of fear and woe had I.
That where I went I did not know,
And only this did know,
That you could die.
(3)
I would have liked to sing from fuller throat
To you who sang so well, but here
I stay
Resting the music on a falling note,
And hear it die away and die away,
With beauty unrehearsed, and life and love
Unsung.
For I had clung,
With what of laughter and of eagerness,
Unto the hope that I might chance to be
The maker of a music nothing less
Than those great poets of antiquity,
Who sang of clouds and winds, of hills and clods,
Of trees and streams, and of the mind of man;
And chaunted too the universal gods.
And their high guardianship since time began;
And did not fail before a theme although
It passed the reason.
(4)
I heard a bird sing in the woods today
A failing song.
The times had caught on him.
In autumn boughs he tried a wonted lay,
And was abashed to find his music grim
As the crows song.
Then, when I raised an air
To comfort him,
I wretched was to hear
The crow did croak and chatter everywhere
Inside my ear
And so, behold,
I am a saddened elf;
And, as a deer
Flies timidly to shade,
I fly to laughter and I hide myself,
And couch me in the coverts that I made
Against those bold ambitions, and forswear
The palm, the prize, or what it is of gear
A poet gets with his appointed share
Of bread and beer.
(5)
Upon the grass I drop this tuneful reed,
And turn from it aside, and turn from more
That I had fancied to be mine indeed
Beyond all reclamation. See the door
Set in the boundary wall yawns windily,
It will be shut when I have wandered through.
And open will no more again for me
This side of life whatever thing I do.
And so, good-bye, and so, goodnight to you.
And farewell all. Behold the lifted hand.
And the long last look upon the view.
And the last glimpse of that most lovely land.
And thus away unto the mundane sphere,
And look not back again nor turn anew.
And hear no more that laughter at the ear,
And sing no more for you.
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