Part 8 (1/2)

AT TINTERN ABBEY

(June, 1903)

O Tintern, Tintern! evermore my dreams Troubled by thy grave beauty shall be born; Thy crumbling loveliness and ivy streams Shall speak to me for ever, from this morn; The wind-wild daws about thy arches drifting, Clouds sweeping o'er thy ruin to the sea, Gray Tintern, all the hills about thee, lifting Their misty waving woodland verdancy!

The centuries that draw thee to the earth In envy of thy desolated charm, The summers and the winters, the sky's girth Of sunny blue or bleakness, seek thy harm.

But would that I were Time, then only tender Touch upon thee should fall as on I sped; Of every pillar would I be defender, Of every mossy window--of thy dead!

Thy dead beneath obliterated stones Upon the sod that is at last thy floor, Who list the Wye not as it lonely moans Nor heed thy Gothic shadows grieving o'er.

O Tintern, Tintern! trysting-place, where never Are wanting mysteries that move the breast, I'll hear thy beauty calling, ah, for ever-- Till sinks within me the last voice to rest!

OH, GO NOT OUT

Oh, go not out upon the storm, Go not, my sweet, to Swalchie pool!

A witch tho' she be dead may charm Thee and befool.

A wild night 'tis! her lover's moan, Down under ooze and salty weed, She'll make thee hear--and then her own!

Till thou shalt heed.

And it will suck upon thy heart-- The sorcery within her cry-- Till madness out of thee upstart, And rage to die.

For him she loved, she laughed to death!

And as afloat his chill hand lay, ”Ha, ha! to h.e.l.l I sent his wraith!”

Did she not say?

And from his finger strive to draw The ring that bound him to her spell?

Till on her closed his hand whose awe No curse could quell?

Oh, yea! and tho' she struggled pale, Did it not hold her cold and fast, Till crawled the tide o'er rock and swale, To her at last?

Down in the pool where she was swept He holds her--Oh, go not a-near!

For none has heard her cry but wept And died that year.

HUMAN LOVE

We, spoke of G.o.d and Fate, And of that Life--which some await-- Beyond the grave, ”It will be fair,” she said, ”But love is here!

I only crave thy breast Not G.o.d's when I am dead.

For He nor wants nor needs My little love.