| |
| WHERE the thistle lifts a purple crown | |
| Six foot out of the turf, | |
| And the harebell shakes on the windy hill— | |
| O the breath of the distant surf!— | |
| |
| The hills look over on the South, | 5 |
| And southward dreams the sea; | |
| And, with the sea-breeze hand in hand, | |
| Came innocence and she. | |
| |
| Where ’mid the gorse the raspberry | |
| Red for the gatherer springs, | 10 |
| Two children did we stray and talk | |
| Wise, idle, childish things. | |
| |
| She listen’d with big-lipp’d surprise, | |
| Breast-deep ’mid flower and spine: | |
| Her skin was like a grape, whose veins | 15 |
| Run snow instead of wine. | |
| |
| She knew not those sweet words she spake, | |
| Nor knew her own sweet way; | |
| But there ’s never a bird, so sweet a song | |
| Throng’d in whose throat that day! | 20 |
| |
| O, there were flowers in Storrington | |
| On the turf and on the spray; | |
| But the sweetest flower on Sussex hills | |
| Was the Daisy-flower that day! | |
| |
| Her beauty smooth’d earth’s furrow’d face! | 25 |
| She gave me tokens three:— | |
| A look, a word of her winsome mouth, | |
| And a wild raspberry. | |
| |
| A berry red, a guileless look, | |
| A still word,—strings of sand! | 30 |
| And yet they made my wild, wild heart | |
| Fly down to her little hand. | |
| |
| For, standing artless as the air, | |
| And candid as the skies, | |
| She took the berries with her hand, | 35 |
| And the love with her sweet eyes. | |
| |
| The fairest things have fleetest end: | |
| Their scent survives their close, | |
| But the rose’s scent is bitterness | |
| To him that loved the rose! | 40 |
| |
| She looked a little wistfully, | |
| Then went her sunshine way:— | |
| The sea’s eye had a mist on it, | |
| And the leaves fell from the day. | |
| |
| She went her unremembering way, | 45 |
| She went, and left in me | |
| The pang of all the partings gone, | |
| And partings yet to be. | |
| |
| She left me marvelling why my soul | |
| Was sad that she was glad; | 50 |
| At all the sadness in the sweet, | |
| The sweetness in the sad. | |
| |
| Still, still I seem’d to see her, still | |
| Look up with soft replies, | |
| And take the berries with her hand, | 55 |
| And the love with her lovely eyes. | |
| |
| Nothing begins, and nothing ends, | |
| That is not paid with moan; | |
| For we are born in other’s pain, | |
| And perish in our own. | 60 |
| |
