I’ll rise at midnight and I’ll rove
Up the hill and down the drove
That leads to the old unnoticed mill,
And think of one I used to love:
There stooping to the hunching wall
I’ll stare into the rush of stars
Or bubbles that the waterfall
Brings forth and breaks in ceaseless wars.
The shelving hills have made a fourm
Where the mill holdings shelter warm,
And here I came with one I loved
To watch the seething millions swarm.
But long ago she grew a ghost
Though walking with me every day;
Even when her beauty burned me most
She to a spectre dimmed away--
Until though cheeks all morning-bright
And black eyes gleaming life’s delight
And singing voice dwelt in my sense,
Herself paled on my inward sight.
She grew one whom deep waters glassed.
Then in dismay I hid from her,
And lone by talking brooks at last
I found a Love still lovelier.
O lost in tortured days of France!
Yet still the moment comes like chance
Born in the stirring midnight’s sigh
Or in the wild wet sunset’s glance:
And how I know not but this stream
Still sounds like vision’s voice, and still
I watch with Love the bubbles gleam,
I walk with Love beside the mill.
The heavens are thralled with cloud, yet gray
Half-moonlight swims the fields till day,
The stubbled fields, the bleaching woods;--
Even this bleak hour is stolen away
By this shy water falling low,
And calling low the whole night through,
And calling back the long ago
And richest world I ever knew.
The hop-kiln fingers cobweb-white
With discord dim turned left and right,
And when the wind was south and small
The sea’s far whisper drowsed the night;
Scarce more than mantling ivy’s voice
That in the tumbling water trailed.
Love’s spirit called me to rejoice
When she to nothingness had paled:
For Love the daffodils shone here
In grass the greenest of the year,
Daffodils seemed the sunset lights
And silver birches budded clear:
And all from east to west there strode
Great shafted clouds in argent air,
The shining chariot-wheels of God,
And still Love’s moment sees them there.