729. The Nymph’s Song to Hylas

I KNOW a little garden-close

Set thick with lily and red rose,

Where I would wander if I might

From dewy dawn to dewy night,

And have one with me wandering.

And though within it no birds sing,

And though no pillar’d house is there,

And though the apple boughs are bare

Of fruit and blossom, would to God,

Her feet upon the green grass trod,

And I beheld them as before!

There comes a murmur from the shore,

And in the place two fair streams are,

Drawn from the purple hills afar,

Drawn down unto the restless sea;

The hills whose flowers ne’er fed the bee,

The shore no ship has ever seen,

Still beaten by the billows green,

Whose murmur comes unceasingly

Unto the place for which I cry.

For which I cry both day and night,

For which I let slip all delight,

That maketh me both deaf and blind,

Careless to win, unskill’d to find,

And quick to lose what all men seek.

Yet tottering as I am, and weak,

Still have I left a little breath

To seek within the jaws of death

An entrance to that happy place;

To seek the unforgotten face

Once seen, once kiss’d, once reft from me

Anigh the murmuring of the sea.