It was beneath a waning moon when all the woods were sear,
And winds made eddies of the leaves that whispered far and near,
I met her on the bramble bridge we parted at last year.

At first I deemed her but a mist that faltered in that place,
An autumn mist beneath the trees the moon's thin beams did lace,
Until I neared and in the moon beheld her face to face.

The crinkle of the summer heat above the drouth-burnt leas;
The shimmer of the thistle-drift adown the silences;
The gliding of the fairy-fire between the swamp and trees:

All qualified her presence as a sorrow may a dream—
The vague suggestion of a self; the glimmer of a gleam;
The actual and unreal of the things that are and seem.

Where once she came with welcome and glad eyes, all loving-wise,
She passed, and gave no greeting that my heart could recognize,
With far, set face, unseeing, and sad, unremembering eyes.

It was beneath a waning moon when woods were bleak and sear,
And winds made whispers of the leaves that eddied far and near,
I met her ghost upon the bridge we parted at last year.

Do you recall the fancies of many years ago,
When the pulse danced those light measure that again it cannot know!
Ah! We both of us are alter’d, and now we talk no more
Of all the old creations that haunted us of yore.

Then any favourite volume was a mine of long delight,
From whence we took our future, to fashion as we might,
We liv’d again its pages, we were its chiefs and kings,
As actual, but more pleasant, than what the day now brings.

It was an August evening, with sunset in the trees,
When home you brought his Voyages who found the Fair South Seas.
We read it till the sunset amid the boughs grew dim;
All other favourite heroes were nothing beside him.

For weeks he was our idol, we sail’d with him at sea,
And the pond amid the willows the ocean seem’d to be.
The water-lilies growing beneath the morning smile,
We called the South Sea islands, each flower a different isle.

No golden lot that fortune could draw for human life,
To us seemed like a sailor’s, mid the storm and strife.
Our talk was of fair vessels that swept before the breeze,
And new discover’d countries amid the Southern seas.

Within that lonely garden what happy hours went by,
While we fancied that around us spread foreign sea and sky.
Ah! the dreaming and the distant no longer haunt the mind;
We leave in leaving childhood, life’s fairy land behind.

There is not of that garden a single tree or flower;
They have plough’d its long green grasses and cut down the lime-tree bower,
Where are the Guelder roses, whose silver used to bring,
With the gold of the laburnums, their tribute to the Spring.

They have vanish’d with the childhood that with their treasures play’d;
The life that cometh after, dwells in a darker shade.
Yet the name of that sea-captain, it cannot but recall
How much we lov’d his dangers, and we mourn’d his fall.