Chapter I: The Prelude

I saw the regal sun look down
And crown the earth with a golden crown:
I saw his bright embraces fill
The valley and assail the hill;
I saw him kiss the hill I knew
Where matted gorse and heather grew.

I heard a child go whistling by
To school--I heard the ploughmen cry
To their horses--in the yard
A bantam-cock was crowing hard--
A pensive and complacent hen
Began to drawl .. drawl ... drawl .... and then
A puppy yapping with delight
Chased and hustled her in flight.

I took me to a tangled lane
Hoping for quietness--in vain;
I only in the world was mute.
The blackbird laughed upon his flute,
And starlings talked in wayward wise
On creaking boughs, and up the skies
The trembling, quick, delirious lark
Sang until my soul was dark.

So morning, noon and all day long
The world was multiplied with song
And I, distracted, could not sing;
At length, toward the evening,
I climbed the little hill I knew
Where matted gorse and heather grew.

Slowly,
Slowly,
Slowly at last the evening fell;
Slowly beneath her drowsy spell
The teeming brain of the world was quieted:
The noise of day was dead.

Now might a single human thought
Flying out, keen-wrought,
Usurp dominion of the sky, and fill
The void of the world with a chant of love, and move it to one will.

So from my ingathered soul
Softly sang I to my Love--
Softly, yet I heard the whole
Shining world, beneath, above,
Echo me and ring and ring
Through the quiet evening.

First I sang how she doth dwell
Carven so within my mind
That her tokens I do spell
And her vital beauty find
Paining me, oh everywhere
Phantom-bright upon the air.

Morning winds with liquid tune
Her abounding joy express;
Azure-folded deeps of June
Tell me of her tenderness;
Laughingly the waterbrooks
Mirror her untainted looks.

Trembling shadows wake in me
Sense of the outflowing tide
Of her hidden rarity,
Till I dream her at my side,--
And her prayed-for kisses rain
Through and through me, sharp with pain.

Hushed the melody I sang,
Earth around me rang and rang.