The Progress of Love (A Lyrical Symphony) V

And God sighed in the sunset; and the seaForgot her sorrow, and all the breathless WestGrew quiet as the blue tranquillity

That clad the broken mountain's brilliant breast,Over the City, with deep heather-bloomHeaving from crag to crag in sweet unrest,

A sea of dim rich colour and warm perfumeWhose billows rocked the drowsy honey-beeAmong the golden isles of gorse and broom

Like some enchanted ancient argosyDrunkenly blundering over seas of dreamPast unimagined isles of mystery,Over whose yellow sands the soft waves cream,And sunbeams float and toss across the bareRose-white arms and perilous breasts that gleam

Where sirens wind their glossy golden hair;Oh, miles on miles, the honeyed heather-bloomHeaving its purple through the high bright air

Rolled a silent glory of gleam and gloomFrom mossy crag to crag and crest to crestUntroubled by the valley's depth of doom.

The hawk dropped down into the pine-forestAnd, far below, the lavrock ruffled her wingsBlossomwise over her winsome secret nest.

Then suddenly, softly, as when a fairy singsOut of the heart of a rose in the heart of the fern,Or in the floating starlight faintly rings

The frail blue hare-bells--turn again, and turn,Under and over, the silvery crescents cryTo where the crimson fox-glove belfries burn

And with a deeper softer peal reply,There came a ripple of music through the rosesThat rustled on the dimmest rim of sky

Where many a frame of fretted leaves enclosesFor lovers wandering in the fern-wet woodAn arch of summer sea that softly dozes

As if all mysteries were understood:Yrma, my queen, what love could understandThat faint sweet music, God saith all is good,

As those two children, hand in sunburnt hand,Over the blithe blue hills and far awayWandered into their own green fairyland?