HIS eyes reflect the blue of seas
That circle coasts remote and lone;
His lips are salt with spray from these;
His tempered voice betrays the tone
Of alien tongues; and in his ears
Insistent cadences he hears
Of alien creeds now made his own.
Pale stars have met above his head
To plot his peace; and they have driven
The hostile comet, vengeance-bred,
Staggering, spent, across the heaven.
Then, knowing what the days prepare,
They lift their lights in patience where
Familiar valleys wait his tread.
Star-led, he loiters toward his dream,
Though weary of the dream, until
At last he sees fair hills that seem
To rim his village, and his will
Grows unto her who lingers there,
Where silent sun and kindly air
Brood on the bower by the stream.
He bows his head beside the door
And speaks in accents of his youth:
‘O love, whom I would cherish more
Than youth could cherish! all my truth
Comes home to thee. Forget the years,
The sad novitiate of tears;
Accept, at last, my tardy ruth.
‘I bring thee peace and not alarm;
I lose the world for thee. Be thou
Set as a seal upon my arm,
Bound for a frontlet on my brow,
My sign of faith, my shield to save,
My amulet against the grave.
Lo, thou hast loved, but I love now!’
He lifts his eyes to meet her face,
Her sad brown eyes, her wistful cheek,
For which his hunger grows apace,
Which he has crossed those hills to seek.
No vision rises to assuage;
The thrush has pined within its cage,
The hearth is cold, and void the place.
From some dim corner far within
A sudden answer rises shrill,
And peering through her elf-locks thin
An aged crone leans o’er the sill.
‘You seek,’ she croaks, ‘a bird that’s fled.
Her flowers rot, her thrush is dead.
Here is no treasure you can win.
‘She loved, for years, a worthless wight
Who fled long since this quiet spot.
She wept by day, she watched by night;
She wove her shroud and faltered not.
One day the lightning shattered through
The loom on which the garment grew.
“Not death but life, then, is my lot,”
‘I heard her murmur. She has sped
Beyond these hills in search of life.
Mayhap she has found death instead;
Perchance she is a happy wife.
I know and reck not of her fate.
I starve and shiver here, and wait
But to be gathered to the dead.’
‘She loved him ever? Tell me this.’
The old crone answered, ‘Stark awake,
At night, she cried out for his kiss.
I heard her weeping. Curses take
The man who robbed me, first, of rest,
And then of her who served me best!’
She closed the casement as she spake.
The little hills that rim his home,
How high they seem! for he has turned
To cross them, unappeased, and roam
Adrift from stars that erstwhile burned
Above the place he fancied hers.
There is no prophet wind that stirs
To tell him whither she has come.
The little stars that serve the moon,
They weep for silence they must keep:
They may not bring him, late or soon,
To share her waking or her sleep.
‘Yet God will intervene,’ they say;
‘Earth narrows for them, day by day.
Who soweth love, he love shall reap.’