VI

Nature! we storm thine ear with choric notes. Thou answerest through the calm great nights and days, “Laud me who will: not tuneless are your throats; Yet if ye paused I should not miss the praise.”

We falter, half-rebuked, and sing again. We chant thy desertness and haggard gloom, Or with thy splendid wrath inflate the strain, Or touch it with thy colour and perfume.

One, his melodious blood aflame for thee, Wooed with fierce lust, his hot heart world-defiled. One, with the upward eye of infancy, Looked in thy face, and felt himself thy child.

Thee he approached without distrust or dread — Beheld thee throned, an awful queen, above — Climbed to thy lap and merely laid his head Against thy warm wild heart of mother-love.

He heard that vast heart beating — thou didst press Thy child so close, and lov'dst him unaware. Thy beauty gladdened him; yet he scarce less Had loved thee, had he never found thee fair!

For thou wast not as legendary lands To which with curious eyes and ears we roam. Nor wast thou as a fane mid solemn sands, Where palmers halt at evening. Thou wast home.

And here, at home, still bides he; but he sleeps; Not to be wakened even at thy word; Though we, vague dreamers, dream he somewhere keeps An ear still open to thy voice still heard,—

Thy voice, as heretofore, about him blown, For ever blown about his silence now; Thy voice, though deeper, yet so like his own That almost, when he sang, we deemed‘ twas thou!