Recollections of Love

How warm this woodland wild Recess !
Love surely hath been breathing here ;
And this sweet bed of heath, my dear !
Swells up, then sinks with faint caress,
As if to have you yet more near.

Eight springs have flown, since last I lay
On sea-ward Quantock's heathy hills,
Where quiet sounds from hidden rills
Float hear and there, like things astray,
And high o'er head the sky-lark shrills.

No voice as yet had made the air
Be music with your name ; yet why
That asking look ? that yearning sigh ?
That sense of promise every where ?
Belovéd ! flew your spirit by ?

As when a mother doth explore
The rose-mark on her long-lost child,
I met, I loved you, maiden mild !
As whom I long had loved before --
So deeply had I been beguiled.

You stood before me like a thought,
A dream remembered in a dream.
But when those meek eyes first did seem
To tell me, Love within you wrought--
O Greta, dear domestic stream !

Has not, since then, Love's prompture deep,
Has not Love's whisper evermore
Been ceaseless, as thy gentle roar ?
Sole voice, when other voices sleep,
Dear under-song in clamor's hour.

A slumber did my spirit seal;
  I had no human fears:
She seem'd a thing that could not feel
  The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force;
  She neither hears nor sees;
Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course,
  With rocks, and stones, and trees.