Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
William Wordsworth. 17701850541. Speak!
WHY art thou silent! Is thy love a plant | |
Of such weak fibre that the treacherous air | |
Of absence withers what was once so fair? | |
Is there no debt to pay, no boon to grant? | |
Yet have my thoughts for thee been vigilant— | 5 |
Bound to thy service with unceasing care, | |
The mind’s least generous wish a mendicant | |
For nought but what thy happiness could spare. | |
Speak—though this soft warm heart, once free to hold | |
A thousand tender pleasures, thine and mine, | 10 |
Be left more desolate, more dreary cold | |
Than a forsaken bird’s-nest filled with snow | |
‘Mid its own bush of leafless eglantine— | |
Speak, that my torturing doubts their end may know! |