Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
William Morris. 18341896802. 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. | 5 |
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, | 10 |
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; | 15 |
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. | 20 |
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. | 25 |
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 | 30 |
Once seen, once kiss’d, once reft from me | |
Anigh the murmuring of the sea. |