I

In other worlds I loved you, long ago:
Love that hath no beginning hath no end.
The woodbine whispers, low and sweet and low,
In other worlds I loved you, long ago;
The firwoods murmur and the sea-waves know
The message that the setting sun shall send.
In other worlds I loved you, long ago:
Love that hath no beginning hath no end.


II

And God sighed in the sunset; and the sea
Chanted the soft recessional of Time
Against the golden shores of mystery;

And ever as that long low change and chime
With one slow sob of molten music yearned
Westward, it seemed as if the Love sublime

Almost uttered itself, where the waves burned
In little flower-soft flames of rose and green
That woke to seaward, while the tides returned

Rising and falling, ruffled and serene,
With all the mirrored tints of heaven above
Shimmering through their mystic myriad sheen.

As a dove's burnished breast throbbing with love
Swells and subsides to call her soft-eyed mate
Home through the rosy gloom of glen or grove,

So when the greenwood noon was growing late
The sea called softly through the waste of years,
Called to the star that still can consecrate

The holy golden haze of human tears
Which tinges every sunset with our grief
Until the perfect Paraclete appears.

Ah, the long sigh that yields the world relief
Rose and relapsed across Eternity,
Making a joy of sorrows that are brief,

As, o'er the bright enchantment of the sea,
Facing the towers of that old City of Pain
Which stands upon the shores of mystery

And frowns across the immeasurable main,
Venus among her cloudy sunset flowers
Woke; and earth melted into heaven again.

For even the City's immemorial towers
Were tinted into secret tone and time,
Like old forgotten tombs that age embowers

With muffling roses and with mossy rime
Until they seem no monument of ours,
But one more note in earth's accordant chime.

O Love, Love, Love, all dreams, desires and powers,
Were but as chords of that ineffable psalm;
And all the long blue lapse of summer hours,

And all the breathing sunset's golden balm
By that æonian sorrow were resolved
As dew into the music's infinite calm,

Through which the suns and moons and stars revolved
According to the song's divine decree,
Till Time was but a tide of intervolved

And interweaving worlds of melody;
In other worlds I loved you, long ago,--
The angelic citoles fainted o'er the sea;

And seraph citerns answered, sweet and low,
From where the sunset and the moonrise blend,--
In other worlds I loved you, long ago;

Love that hath no beginning hath no end;
O Love, Love, Love, the bitter City of Pain
Bidding the golden echoes westward wend,

Chimed in accordant undertone again:
Though every grey old tower rose like a tomb
To mock the glory of the shoreless main

They could but strike such discords as illume
The music with strange gleams of utter light
And hallow all the valley's rosy gloom.

And there, though greyly sinking out of sight
Before the wonders of the sky and sea,
Back through the valley, back into the night,

While mystery melted into mystery,
The City still rebuffed the far sweet West
That dimmed her sorrows with infinity;

Yet sometimes yearning o'er the sea's bright breast
To that remote Avilion would she gaze
Where all lost loves and weary warriors rest.

Then she remembered, through that golden haze,
(Oh faint as flowers the rose-white waves resound)
Her Arthur whom she loved in the dead days,

And how he sailed to heal him of his wound,
And how he lives and reigns eternally
Where now that unknown love is throned and crowned

Who laid his bleeding head against her knee
And loosed the bitter breast-plate and unbound
His casque and brought him strangely o'er the sea,

And how she reigns beside him on that shore
For ever (Yrma, queen, bend down to me)
And they twain have no sorrow any more.


III

They have forgotten all that vanished away
When life's dark night died into death's bright day
They have forgotten all except the gleam
Of light when once he kissed her in a dream
Once on the lips and once upon the brow
In the white orb of God's transcendent Now;
And even then he knew that, long before,
Their eyes had met upon some distant shore;
Yea; that most lonely and immortal face
Which dwells beyond the dreams of time and space
Bowed down to him from out the happy place
And whispered to him, low and sweet and low
In other worlds I loved you, long ago;
And then he knew his love could never die
Because his queen was throned beyond the sky
And called him to his own immortal sphere
Forgetting Launcelot and Guinevere.

So Yrma reigns with Arthur, and they know
They loved on earth a million years ago;
And watched the sea-waves wistfully westward wend;
And heard a voice whispering in their flow,
And calling through the silent sunset-glow,
Love that hath no beginning hath no end.


IV

It was about the dawn of day
I heard Etain and Anwyl say
The waving ferns are a fairy forest,
It is time, it is time to wander away;

For the dew is bright on the heather bells,
And the breeze in the clover sways and swells,
As the waves on the blue sea wake and wander,
Over and under the braes and dells.

She was eight years old that day,
Full of laughter and play;
Eight years old and Anwyl nine,--
Two young lovers were they.

Two young lovers were they,
Born in the City of Pain;
There was never a song in the world so gay
As the song of the child, Etain;

There was never a laugh so sweet
With the ripple of fairy bells,
And never a fairy foot so fleet
Dancing down the woodland dells!

She was eight years old that day,
Two young lovers were they.

There was never a sea of mystical gleams
Glooming under enchanted skies
Deep as the dark miraculous dreams
In Anwyl's haunted eyes.

There was never a glory of light
Around the carolling lark
As Etain's eyes were brave and bright
To daunt the coming dark.

Two young lovers were they
Born in the City of Pain;
There was never a song in the world so gay
As the song of the child, Etain;

Blithe as the wind in the trees,
Blithe as the bird on the bough,
Blithe as the bees in the sweet Heart's-ease
Where Love lies bleeding now.


V

And God sighed in the sunset; and the sea
Forgot her sorrow, and all the breathless West
Grew quiet as the blue tranquillity

That clad the broken mountain's brilliant breast,
Over the City, with deep heather-bloom
Heaving from crag to crag in sweet unrest,

A sea of dim rich colour and warm perfume
Whose billows rocked the drowsy honey-bee
Among the golden isles of gorse and broom

Like some enchanted ancient argosy
Drunkenly blundering over seas of dream
Past unimagined isles of mystery,
Over whose yellow sands the soft waves cream,
And sunbeams float and toss across the bare
Rose-white arms and perilous breasts that gleam

Where sirens wind their glossy golden hair;
Oh, miles on miles, the honeyed heather-bloom
Heaving its purple through the high bright air

Rolled a silent glory of gleam and gloom
From mossy crag to crag and crest to crest
Untroubled by the valley's depth of doom.

The hawk dropped down into the pine-forest
And, far below, the lavrock ruffled her wings
Blossomwise over her winsome secret nest.

Then suddenly, softly, as when a fairy sings
Out of the heart of a rose in the heart of the fern,
Or in the floating starlight faintly rings

The frail blue hare-bells--turn again, and turn,
Under and over, the silvery crescents cry
To where the crimson fox-glove belfries burn

And with a deeper softer peal reply,
There came a ripple of music through the roses
That rustled on the dimmest rim of sky

Where many a frame of fretted leaves encloses
For lovers wandering in the fern-wet wood
An arch of summer sea that softly dozes

As if all mysteries were understood:
Yrma, my queen, what love could understand
That faint sweet music, God saith all is good,

As those two children, hand in sunburnt hand,
Over the blithe blue hills and far away
Wandered into their own green fairyland?


VI

For the song is lost that shook the dew
Where the wild musk-roses glisten,
When the sunset dreamed that a dream was true
And the birds were hushed to listen.

The song is lost that shook the night
With wings of richer fire,
Where the years had touched their eyes with light
And their souls with a new desire;

And the new delight of the strange old story
Burned in the flower-soft skies,
And nine more years with a darker glory
Had deepened the light of her eyes;

But lost, oh more than lost the song
That shook the rose to tears,
As hand in hand they danced along
Through childhood's everlasting years.

"Oh, Love has wings," the linnet sings;
But the dead return no more, no more;
And the sea is breaking its old grey heart
Against the golden shore.

She was eight years old that day,
Two young lovers were they.

If every song as they danced along
Paused on the springing spray;
Is there never a bird in the wide greenwood
Will hush its heart to-day?

There's never a leaf with dew impearled
To make their pathway sweet,
And never a blossom in all the world
That knows the kiss of their feet.

No light to-night declares the word
That thrilled the blossomed bough,
And stilled the happy singing bird
That none can silence now.

The weary nightingale may sob
With her bleeding breast against a thorn,
And the wild white rose with every throb
Grow red as the laugh of morn;

With wings outspread she sinks her head
But Love returns no more, no more;
And the sea is breaking its old grey heart
Against the golden shore.

Born in the City of Pain;
Ah, who knows, who knows
When Death shall turn to delight again
Or a wound to a red, red rose?

Eight years old that day,
Full of laughter and play;
Eight years old and Anwyl nine,--
Two young lovers were they.


VII

And down the scented heather-drowsy hills
The barefoot children wandered, hand in hand,
And paddled through the laughing silver rills
In quest of fairyland;
And in each little sunburnt hand a spray,
A purple fox-glove bell-branch lightly swung,
And Anwyl told Etain how, far away,
One day he wandered through the dreamland dells
And watched the moonlit fairies as they sung
And tolled the fox-glove bells;
And oh, how sweetly, sweetly to and fro
The fragrance of the music reeled and rung
Under the loaded boughs of starry May.

And God sighed in the sunset, and the sea
Grew quieter than the hills: the mystery
Of ocean, earth and sky was like a word
Uttered, but all unheard,
Uttered by every wave and cloud and leaf
With all the immortal glory of mortal grief;
And every wave that broke its heart of gold
In music on the rainbow-dazzled shore
Seemed telling, strangely telling, evermore
A story that must still remain untold.

Oh, Once upon a time, and o'er and o'er
As aye the Happy ever after came
The enchanted waves lavished their faery lore

And tossed a foam-bow and a rosy flame
Around the whispers of the creaming foam,
Till the old rapture with the new sweet name

Through all the old romance began to roam,
And Anwyl, gazing out across the sea,
Dreamed that he heard the distance whisper "Come."

"Etain," he murmured softly and wistfully,
With the soul's wakening wonder in his eyes,
"Is it not strange to think that there can be

"No end for ever and ever to those skies,
No shore beyond, or if there be a shore
Still without end the world beyond it lies;

"Think; think, Etain;" and all his faery lore
Mixed with the faith that brought all gods to birth
And sees new heavens transcend for evermore

The poor impossibilities of earth;
But Etain only laughed: the world to her
Was one sweet smile of very present mirth;

Its flowers were only flowers, common or rare;
Her soul was like a little garden closed
By rose-clad walls, a place of southern air
Islanded from the Mystery that reposed
Its vast and brooding wings on that abyss
Through which like little clouds that dreamed and dozed

The thoughts of Anwyl wandered toward some bliss
Unknown, unfathomed, far, how far away,
Where God has gathered all the eternities
Into strange heavens, beyond the night and day.


VIII

And over the rolling golden bay,
In the funeral pomp of the dying day,
The bell of Time was wistfully tolling
A million million years away;

And over the heather-drowsy hill
Where the burdened bees were buzzing still,
The two little sun-bright barefoot children
Wandered down at the flowers' own will;

For still as the bell in the sunset tolled,
The meadow-sweet and the mary-gold
And the purple orchis kissed their ankles
And lured them over the listening wold.

And the feathery billows of blue-gold grass
Bowed and murmured and bade them pass,
Where a sigh of the sea-wind softly told them
There is no Time--Time never was.

And what if a sorrow were tolled to rest
Where the rich light mellowed away in the West,
As a glory of fruit in an autumn orchard
Heaped and asleep o'er the sea's ripe breast?

Why should they heed it, what should they know
Of the years that come or the years that go,
With the warm blue sky around and above them
And the wild thyme whispering to and fro?

For they heard in the dreamy dawn of day
A fairy harper faintly play,
Follow me, follow me, little children,
Over the hills and far away;

Where the dew is bright on the heather-bells,
And the breeze in the clover sways and swells,
As the waves on the blue sea wake and wander,
Over and under the braes and dells.

And the hare-bells tinkled and rang Ding dong
Bell in the dell as they danced along,
And their feet were stained on the hills with honey,
And crushing the clover till evensong.

And, oh the ripples that rolled in rhyme
Under the wild blue banks of thyme,
To the answering rhyme of the rolling ocean's
Golden glory of change and chime!

For they came to a stream and her fairy lover
Caught at her hand and swung her over,
And the broad wet buttercups laughed and gilded
Their golden knees in the deep sweet clover.

There was never a lavrock up in the skies
Blithe as the laugh of their lips and eyes,
As they glanced and glittered across the meadows
To waken the sleepy butterflies.

There was never a wave on the sea so gay
As the light that danced on their homeward way
Where the waving ferns were a fairy forest
And a thousand years as yesterday.

She was eight years old that day,
Full of laughter and play;