Who is this who looketh forth thro' the lattice,
With glance familiar, yet so strange, so various?
One moment warm as a dear friend's embracing,
Then a veil falls, and lo, cold is the stranger:
Who art thou there lurking behind the lattice,
Ah, who art thou?

Grey were the eyes, as under a grey heaven
A grey sea broodeth, all a-dream and heaveless;
Sudden thro' a rift breaks a happy sunbeam,
A little well of light all the grey ensapphires,
All the lattice glows with a flash of laughter:
Ah, sea-grey eyes!

When sinks the sun and austere grows the evening,
And hill and wood become a solemn purple,
Silent sits the stranger there behind the lattice,
In the sea-grey eyes a solemn purple gathers,
Gathers in the eyes as on the wine-dark waters,
When sinks the sun.

When the white dawn flushes rose and crimson,
In the sea-grey eyes it makes a golden pathway;
Hark, what is that which sings behind the lattice?—
Some strange wild bird enraptured of the sunrise,
Alone, unseen, it sings for its own joyance,
When dawn is white!

Who then is this who sits behind the lattice,
With sea-grey eyes in which the world is mirrored—
Rose of the dawning, and purple of the sunset,
Changes of the sea, and silver of the moonlight?
Wild bird of God, caught in thy lattice prison,
Who, who art thou?