Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/35

Rh 'The singing birds are come, but not thy voice;'

And to the sea they send their fragrant breath—

'Roams now the Child in thy dear charge' they call;

And voiceless is the beach, and echo flown;

And Ocean's self, whose benedictions move

Still blessèd in thy blood, sets in to shore,

And landward calls the wandering waves with him;

But One no more he shepherds whom he loved.

O, thou ungrateful, why dost thou delay?

Too far into the West thy roaming is!

Too long upon thy ocean-cherished eyes,

Brown, bleak, and bare, withers the wind-blown waste;

No fresh-turned field, no glade of violets there,

Nor far gleams of the emerald winter-wheat,

Nor drifts of orchard-blossoms on the hills,

Nor garden-plot, nor tree, nor lilac-spray!

Now homeward through the moonlight-darkened fields

The lover goes; the fire-flies flash; but he

Sees one sweet face that held the rosy West"—

As one who thinks of her he may not love,

And feels his eyes o'erbrim with wasted light,