At dead of night their sails were filled,
And onward each rejoicing steered
Ah, neither blame, for neither willed,
Ór wist, what first with dawn appeared!
To veer, how vain! On, onward strain,
Brave barks! In light, in darkness too,
Through winds and tides one compass
guides
To that, and your own selves, be true. 20 But O blithe breeze; and O great seas,
Though ne'er, that earliest parting past, On your wide plain they join again,
Together lead them home at last.
One port, methought, alike they sought, 25
One purpose hold where'er they fare,
O bounding breeze, O rushing seas!
At last, at last, unite them there.
The rolling mist came down and hid the land: And never home came she.
'Oh! is it weed, or fish, or floating hairA tress of golden hair,
A drowned maiden's hair
Above the nets at sea?
Was never salmon yet that shone so fair
Among the stakes on Dee.'
They rowed her in across the rolling foam,
The cruel crawling foam,
The cruel hungry foam,
To her grave beside the sea:
But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home
Across the sands of Dee.
And when you've rested, brother mine, Take me over the meadow;
Give me only a bid from the trees,
Or a blade of grass in morning dew,
Or a cloudy violet clearing to blue,
I could look on it for ever.
Wheel, wheel through the sunshine,
Wheel, wheel through the shadow;
There must be odours round the pine,
There must be balm of breathing kine
Somewhere down in the meadow.
Must I choose? Then anchor me there 25
Beyond the beckoning poplars, where
The larch is snooding her flowery hair
With wreaths of morning shadow.
Among the thicket hazels of the brake
Perchance some nightingale doth shake 30
His feathers, and the air is full of song;
In those old days when I was young and strong,
He used to sing on yonder garden tree,
Beside the nursery.
Ah, I remember how I loved to wake, And find him singing on the self-same bough (I know it even now)
Sink down like silence, or a-sudden stream As wind-blown on the wind, as streams a wedding-chime.
But you are wheeling me while I dream,
And we've almost reached the meadow! 105
You may wheel me fast through the sunshine,
You may wheel me fast through the shadow,
But wheel me slowly, brother mine,
Through the green of the sappy meadow;
For the sun, these days have been so fine, 110
Must have touched it over with celandine,
And the southern hawthorn, I divine,
Sheds a muffled shadow.
And the bank will be bare wherever they go,
As dawn, the primrose-girl, goes by,
And alas for heaven's primroses!
Blare the trumpet, and boom the gun,
But, oh, to sit here thus in the sun,
To sit here, feeling my work is done,
While the sands of life so golden run,
And I watch the children's posies,
And my idle heart is whispering,
'Bring whatever the years may bring,
The flowers will blossom, the birds will sing,
And there'll always be primroses.'
Looking before me here in the sun,
I see the Aprils one after one,
Primrosed Aprils one by one,
Primrosed Aprils on and on,
Till the floating prospect closes
In golden glimmers that rise and rise, And perhaps are gleams of Paradise,
The bare brown bank will be blind and
And perhaps too far for mortal eyes New years of fresh primroses,
Years of earth's primroses,
But when the din is over and gone,
Like an eye that opens after pain,
I shall see my pale flower shining again;
Like a fair star after a gust of rain
I shall see my pale flower shining again;
Like a glow-worm after the rolling wain
Hath shaken darkness down the lane
I shall see my pale flower shining again;
And it will blow here for two months
more,
And it will blow here again next year,
And the year past that, and the year beyond;
And through all the years till my years are
I shall always find it here.
Two worlds are whispering over me,
And there blows a wind of roses
From the backward shore to the shore be-
fore,
Ere a water-fly wimple the silent pond, Or the first green weed appear.
Shining across from the bank above, Shining up from the pond below,
From the shore before to the backward shore, And like two clouds that meet and pour Each through each, till core in core
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