A Reverie.

        When I do sit apart
        And commune with my heart,
She brings me forth the treasures once my own;
        Shows me a happy place
        Where leaf-buds swelled apace,
And wasting rims of snow in sunlight shone.

        Rock, in a mossy glade,
        The larch-trees lend thee shade,
That just begin to feather with their leaves;
        From out thy crevice deep
        White tufts of snowdrops peep,
And melted rime drips softly from thine eaves.

        Ah, rock, I know, I know
        That yet thy snowdrops grow,
And yet doth sunshine fleck them through the tree,
        Whose sheltering branches hide
        The cottage at its side,
That nevermore will shade or shelter me.

        I know the stockdoves' note
        Athwart the glen doth float:
With sweet foreknowledge of her twins oppressed,
        And longings onward sent,
        She broods before the event,
While leisurely she mends her shallow nest.

        Once to that cottage door,
        In happy days of yore,
My little love made footprints in the snow.
        She was so glad of spring,
        She helped the birds to sing,
I know she dwells there yet - the rest I do not know.

        They sang, and would not stop,
        While drop, and drop, and drop,
I heard the melted rime in sunshine fall;
        And narrow wandering rills,
        Where leaned the daffodils,
Murmured and murmured on, and that was all.

        I think, but cannot tell,
        I think she loved me well,
And some dear fancy with my future twined.
        But I shall never know,
        Hope faints, and lets it go,
That passionate want forbid to speak its mind.