It's growing evening in my soul, It darkens in. At the gray window now and then I hear them toll The hour-and-day-long chimes of St. Etienne. Indeed I'd not have lived elsewhere Nor otherwise, Nor as the dreary saying is Been happier, To wear the love of life within my eyes. My heart's desolate meadow ways, All wet and green, Opened for her to wander in A little space. I'd have it even so as it has been. I've lived the days that fly away, I have a tale To tell when age has made me pale And hair of gray Excuse the fancy shaking out her sail. No one shall know what I intend. Even as I feel The aching voices make appeal And swell and blend. It seems to me I might stoop down to kneel. In memory of that day in June When, all the land Lying out in lazy summer fanned Now and anon By dying breezes from the Channel strand. With nothing in our lives behind, Nothing before, In sunlight rich as melting ore And wide as wind We clomb the donjon tower of old Gisors Thro' the portcullis botched in wood And up, in fear, A laddered darkness of a stair, Up to the good Sun-stricken prospect and the dazzling air -- Even now I shade my breaking eyes -- And by her side Surely she saw my heart divide Like paradise For her to walk abroad in at noontide. It swims about my memory. I feel around The country steeped in summer sound; I feel the sigh That all these years within her breast was bound. Her fingers in my hand are laid. I seem to gaze Into the colours of her face, And there is made A quiver in my knees like meadow-grass'. That time I lived the life I have: A certain flower Blooms in a hundred years one hour, And what it gave Is richer, no, nor more, but all its power. The chimes have ended for today. After midnight Solitude blows her candle out; Dreams go away, And memory falls from the mast of thought. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...WORDS INTO WORDS WON'T GO by CLARENCE MAJOR TO A FRIEND WRITING ON CABARET DANCERS by EZRA POUND FOR A' THAT AND A' THAT; SONG by ROBERT BURNS RICHARD CORY by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON VIRGILS GNAT: DEDICATORY SONNET by EDMUND SPENSER ETHIOPIA SALUTING THE COLORS by WALT WHITMAN A DESCRIPTION OF LONDON by JOHN BANCKS |