Grass of Parnassus. Lang Andrew

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      Three crests against the saffron sky,

         Beyond the purple plain,

      The kind remembered melody

         Of Tweed once more again.

      Wan water from the border hills,

         Dear voice from the old years,

      Thy distant music lulls and stills,

         And moves to quiet tears.

      Like a loved ghost thy fabled flood

         Fleets through the dusky land;

      Where Scott, come home to die, has stood,

         My feet returning stand.

      A mist of memory broods and floats,

         The Border waters flow;

      The air is full of ballad notes,

         Borne out of long ago.

      Old songs that sung themselves to me,

         Sweet through a boy’s day dream,

      While trout below the blossom’d tree

         Plashed in the golden steam.

      Twilight, and Tweed, and Eildon Hill,

         Fair and too fair you be;

      You tell me that the voice is still

         That should have welcomed me.

      I shall not see thee, nay, but I shall know

         Perchance, the grey eyes in another’s eyes,

      Shall guess thy curls in gracious locks that flow

         On purest brows, yea, and the swift surmise

         Shall follow and track, and find thee in disguise

      Of all sad things, and fair, where sunsets glow,

      When through the scent of heather, faint and low,

         The weak wind whispers to the day that dies.

      From all sweet art, and out of all old rhyme,

         Thine eyes and lips are light and song to me;

      The shadows of the beauty of all time,

         In song or story are but shapes of thee;

      Alas, the shadowy shapes! ah, sweet my dear,

         Shall life or death bring all thy being near?

      I dreamed that somewhere in the shadowy place,

         Grief of farewell unspoken was forgot

         In welcome, and regret remembered not;

      And hopeless prayer accomplished turned to praise

      On lips that had been songless many days;

         Hope had no more to hope for, and desire

         And dread were overpast, in white attire

      New born we walked among the new world’s ways.

      Then from the press of shades a spirit threw

         Towards me such apples as these gardens bear;

      And turning, I was ’ware of her, and knew

         And followed her fleet voice and flying hair, —

      Followed, and found her not, and seeking you

         I found you never, dearest, anywhere.

      The perfect piteous beauty of thy face

         Is like a star the dawning drives away;

         Mine eyes may never see in the bright day

      Thy pallid halo, thy supernal grace;

      But in the night from forth the silent place

         Thou comest, dim in dreams, as doth a stray

         Star of the starry flock that in the grey

      Is seen, and lost, and seen a moment’s space.

      And as the earth at night turns to a star,

         Loved long ago, and dearer than the sun,

      So in the spiritual place afar,

         At night our souls are mingled and made one,

      And wait till one night fall, and one dawn rise,

      That brings no noon too splendid for your eyes.

      The wind and the day had lived together,

         They died together, and far away

      Spoke farewell in the sultry weather,

      Out of the sunset, over the heather,

         The dying wind and the dying day.

      Far in the south, the summer levin

         Flushed, a flame in the grey soft air:

      We seemed to look on the hills of heaven;

      You saw within, but to me ’twas given

         To see your face, as an angel’s, there.

      Never again, ah surely never

         Shall we wait and watch, where of old we stood,

      The low good-night of the hill and the river,

      The faint light fade, and the wan stars quiver,

         Twain grown one in the solitude.

      Come to me in my dreams, and then,

      One saith, I shall be well again,

      For then the night will more than pay

      The hopeless longing of the day.

      Nay, come not thou in dreams, my sweet,

      With shadowy robes, and silent feet,

      And with the voice, and with the eyes