| |
| FIFTY years spent before I found me, | |
| Wind on my mouth and the taste of the rain, | |
| Where the great hills circled and swept around me | |
| And the torrents leapt to the mist-drenched plain; | |
| Ah, it was long this coming of me | 5 |
| Back to the hills and the sounding sea. | |
| |
| Ye who can go when so it tideth | |
| To fallow fields when the Spring is new, | |
| Finding the spirit that there abideth, | |
| Taking fill of the sun and the dew; | 10 |
| Little ye know of the cross of the town | |
| And the small pale folk who go up and down. | |
| |
| Fifty years spent before I found me | |
| A bank knee-deep with climbing rose, | |
| Saw, or had space to look around me, | 15 |
| Knew how the apple buds and blows; | |
| And all the while that I thought me wise | |
| I walked as one with blinded eyes. | |
| |
| Scarcely a lad who passes twenty | |
| But finds him a girl to balm his heart; | 20 |
| Only I, who had work so plenty, | |
| Bade this loving keep apart: | |
| Once I saw a girl in a crowd, | |
| But I hushed my heart when it cried out aloud. | |
| |
| City courts in January,— | 25 |
| City courts in wilted June, | |
| Often ye will catch and carry | |
| Echoes of some straying tune; | |
| Ah, but underneath the feet | |
| Echo stifles in a street. | 30 |
| |
| Fifty years spent, and what do they bring me? | |
| Now I can buy the meadow and hill: | |
| Where is the heart of the boy to sing thee? | |
| Where is the life for thy living to fill? | |
| And thirty years back in a city crowd | 35 |
| I passed a girl when my heart cried loud! | |
| |
