Recollections of Love

How warm this woodland wild Recess!
Love surely hath been breathing here;
And this sweet bed of heath, my dear!
Swells up, then sinks with faint caress,
As if to have you yet more near.

Eight springs have flown, since last I lay
On seaward Quantock’s heathy hills,
Where quiet sounds from hidden rills
Float here and there, like things astray,
And high o’er head the skylark shrills.

No voice as yet had made the air
Be music with your name, yet why
That asking look? that yearning sigh?
That sense of promise everywhere?
Belovéd! flew your spirit by?

As when a mother doth explore
The rose-mark on her long-lost child,
I met, I loved you, maiden mild!
As whom I long had loved before—
So deeply had I been beguiled.

You stood before me like a thought,
A dream remembered in a dream.
But when those meek eyes first did seem
To tell me, Love within you wrought—
O Greta, dear domestic stream!

Has not, since then, Love’s prompture deep,
Has not Love’s whisper evermore
Been ceaseless, as thy gentle roar?
Sole voice, when other voices sleep,
Dear under-song in clamor’s hour.