Choriambics -- II
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ere the flame that was ash, shrine that was void,lost in the haunted wood,I have tended and loved, year upon year, I in the solitudeWaiting, quiet and glad-eyed in the dark, knowing that once a gleamGlowed and went through the wood. Still I abode strong in a golden dream,Unrecaptured.For I, I that had faith, knew that a face would glanceOne day, white in the dim woods, and a voice call, and a radianceFill the grove, and the fire suddenly leap . . . and, in the heart of it,End of labouring, you! Therefore I kept ready the altar, litThe flame, burning apart.Face of my dreams vainly in vision whiteGleaming down to me, lo! hopeless I rise now. For about midnightWhispers grew through the wood suddenly, strange cries in the boughs aboveGrated, cries like a laugh. Silent and black then through the sacred groveGreat birds flew, as a dream, troubling the leaves, passing at length.I knewLong expected and long loved, that afar, God of the dim wood, youSomewhere lay, as a child sleeping, a child suddenly reft from mirth,White and wonderful yet, white in your youth, stretched upon foreign earth,God, immortal and dead!Therefore I go; never to rest, or winPeace, and worship of you more, and the dumb wood and the shrine therein.
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