Page:The Poems of Henry Kendall (1920).djvu/164

 Now, after darkness, like a mighty spell

Amongst the hills and dim, dispeopled dells,

Had brought a stillness to the soul of things,

It came to pass that, from the secret depths

Of dripping gorges, many a runnel-voice

Came, mellowed with the silence, and remained

About the caves, a sweet though alien sound;

Now rising ever, like a fervent flute

In moony evenings, when the theme is love;

Now falling, as ye hear the Sunday bells

While hastening fieldward from the gleaming town.

Then fell a softer mood, and memory paused

With faithful love, amidst the sainted shrines

Of youth and passion in the valleys past

Of dear delights which never grow again.

And if the stranger (who had left behind

Far anxious homesteads in a wave-swept isle,

To face a fierce sea-circle day by day,

And hear at night the dark Atlantic's moan)

Now took a hope and planned a swift return,

With wealth and health and with a youth unspent,

To those sweet ones that stayed with want at home,

Say who shall blame him—though the years are long,

And life is hard, and waiting makes the heart grow old?

Thus passed the time, until the moon serene

Stood over high dominion like a dream

Of peace: within the white, transfigured woods;

And o'er the vast dew-dripping wilderness

Of slopes illumined with her silent fires.

Then, far beyond the home of pale red leaves

And silver sluices, and the shining stems

Of runnel blooms, the dreamy wanderer saw,

The wilder for the vision of the moon,

Stark desolations and a waste of plain,

All smit by flame and broken with the storms;

Black ghosts of trees, and sapless trunks that stood

Harsh hollow channels of the fiery noise,

Which ran from bole to bole a year before,

And grew with ruin, and was like, indeed,