Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900.djvu/740

 I can give not what men call love: But wilt thou accept not The worship the heart lifts above And the heavens reject not, The desire of the moth for the star, Of the night for the morrow, The devotion to something afar From the sphere of our sorrow?

616 The Question

I dream'd that, as I wander'd by the way, Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring; And gentle odours led my steps astray, Mix'd with a sound of waters murmuring Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling Its green arms round the bosom of the stream, But kiss'd it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream.

There grew pied wind-flowers and violets; Daisies, those pearl'd Arcturi of the earth, The constellated flower that never sets; Faint oxlips; tender bluebells, at whose birth The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets— Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth— Its mother's face with heaven-collected tears When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears.

And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine, Green cowbind and the moonlight-colour'd May, And cherry-blossoms, and white cups whose wine Was the bright dew yet drain'd not by the day;