Classic Poem

How do I love on summer nights
To sit within this Norman door,
Whose sombre portal hides the lights
Thickening above me evermore!

How do I love to hear the flow
Of Aspin's water murmuring low;
And hours long listen to the breeze
That sighs in Rockden's waving trees.

To-night, there is no wind to wake
One ripple on the lonely lake;
To-night, the clouds subdued and grey
Starlight and moonlight shut away.

'Tis calm and still and almost drear,
So utter is the solitude;
But still I love to linger here
And form my mood to nature's mood.

There's a wild walk beneath the rocks
Following the bend of Aspin's side;
'Tis worn by feet of mountain-flocks
That wander down to drink the tide.

Never by cliff and gnarled tree
Wound fairy path so sweet to me;
Yet of the native shepherds none,
In open day and cheerful sun,
Will tread its labyrinths alone;
Far less when evening's pensive hour
Hushes the bird and shuts the flower,
And gives to Fancy magic power
O'er each familiar tone.

For round their hearths they'll tell the tale,
And every listener swears it true,
How wanders there a phantom pale
With spirit-eyes of dreamy blue.

It always walks with head declined,
Its long curls move not in the wind,
Its face is fair — divinely fair;
But brooding on that angel brow
Rests such a shade of deep despair
As nought divine could ever know.

How oft in twilight, lingering lone,
I've stood to watch that phantom rise,
And seen in mist and moonlit stone
Its gleaming hair and solemn eyes.

The ancient men, in secret, say
'Tis the first chief of Aspin grey
That haunts his feudal home;
But why, around that alien grave
Three thousand miles beyond the wave,
Where his exiled ashes lie
Under the cope of England's sky,
Doth he not rather roam?

I've seen his picture in the hall;
It hangs upon an eastern wall,
And often when the sun declines
That picture like an angel shines;
And when the moonbeam, chill and blue,
Streams the spectral windows through,
That picture's like a spectre too.

The hall is full of portraits rare;
Beauty and mystery mingle there:
At his right hand an infant fair
Looks from its golden frame;
And just like his its ringlets bright,
Its large dark eye of shadowy light,
Its cheeks' pure hue, its forehead white,
And like its noble name.

Daughter divine! and could his gaze
Fall coldly on thy peerless face?
And did he never smile to see
Himself restored to infancy?

Never part back that golden flow
Of curls, and kiss that pearly brow,
And feel no other earthly bliss
Was equal to that parent's kiss?

No; turn towards the western side:
There stands Sidonia's deity,
In all her glory, all her pride!
And truly like a god she seems:
Some god of wild enthusiast's dreams;
And this is she for whom he died:
For whom his spirit, unforgiven,
Wanders unsheltered, shut from heaven —
An outcast for eternity.

Those eyes are dust, those lips are clay;
That form is mouldered all away;
Nor thought, nor sense, nor pulse, nor breath:
The whole devoured and lost in death!

There is no worm, however mean,
That, living, is not nobler now
Than she, Lord Alfred's idol queen,
So loved, so worshipped, long ago.

O come away! the Norman door
Is silvered with a sudden shine;
Come, leave these dreams o'er things of yore
And turn to Nature's face divine.

O'er wood and wold, o'er flood and fell,
O'er flashing lake and gleaming dell,
The harvest moon looks down;
And when heaven smiles with love and light,
And earth looks back so dazzling bright —
In such a scene, on such a night,
Earth's children should not frown.