Classic Poem

Out at sunrise on Romney Marsh
We hear the curlew call,
The young lambs crying to the sheep
Within the old sea-wall;
The bleak tree that the sea-wind strikes
Is bowed across the lilied dykes,
All heaven drifting with the lark,
The lark that sings for all.

You gather mushrooms from the grass,
The newborn mushrooms white,
And stoop about with tender cries
That come of pure delight.
The sheep-lit pastures run for miles
With distant villages for isles,
And Lymne's grey castle on the down
Beholds us from the height.

From that light-impassion'd vast of bliss
That never a shade devours
Falls not upon us both the kiss
Of new-awakening powers?
O'er-vaulting golden cloudlets race
Eastwards, and leave us time and space;
Strange winds and clouds and falls of sheen
Mix'd at this birth of flowers!
We are breakers-in upon some scene
Meant for new eyes like ours.

Shall then the very core of life
Rouse on the harp no string?
Shall they be dumb, those radiances,
That have so fleet a wing?
Shall it awake, the great sunrise,
To perish all unheard,
And the soul's wide flights of melodies
Fail, for a narrow word?

Since we must forth, like gallant ships,
Far from the haven'd land,
Since we must melt like sandy smoke
That blows along the strand,
Since we must bow and part in grief,
Like the rushes or the driven leaf,
O put not on my singing lips
The proud seal of your hand!

Ah, lovely Silence!—Voices parting—
Answering, through light we breathe
In clearness and in glory once,
Are all we can bequeathe.
E'en mad winds joy—all that have breath
Arise, and break to flame;
Hour ineffaceable as death
Shalt thou not have a name?

Exquisite Spirit, in whose eyes
Floats the unseeing ray—
Though utterance scorch, between us two,
Let my fierce spirit reach to you—
Be silence torn away!
Now wave meets wave; and dull grief's weight.
O'erwhelming time, ascends,
Now the shaken soul's half-agony
For an instant comprehends,
Now all things travel to a voice—
We see, as from a shore;
Let the heart speak, while yet we see,
Lest it have sight no more.