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COLIN HOW look’d your love, sweet Shepherd, yestereven, | |
| When under apple-boughs ye stole a tryst, | |
| While Hesper held the glowing gates of heaven | |
| Ere colder stars besprent its amethyst? | |
| Ah! happy one, how look’d those lids ye kiss’d, | 5 |
| And seem’d her blush of half its rose bereaven | |
| By wan green glimmer and by meadow mist, | |
| From grassy floor, with leaves enshadow’d o’er, | |
| Dim filtering through the seven-score trees and seven | |
| Of the orchard by the shore? | 10 |
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SHEPHERD Colin, the grass was grey and wet the sod | |
| O’er which I heard her velvet footfall come; | |
| But heaven, where yet no pallid crescent rode | |
| Flower’d in fire behind the bloomless plum; | |
| There stirr’d no wing nor wind, the wood was dumb, | 15 |
| Only blown roses shook their leaves abroad | |
| On stems more tender than an infant’s thumb— | |
| Soft leaves, soft hued, and curl’d like Cupid’s lip; | |
| And each dim tree shed sweetness over me, | |
| From honey-dews that breathless boughs let slip | 20 |
| In the orchard by the sea. | |
| |
COLIN Yea, Shepherd, I have seen how blossoms fold, | |
| And waded deep, where deep an orchard grows; | |
| But what of her whose sweet ye leave untold, | |
| Whose step fell softer than a south-wind blows? | 25 |
| What of her beauty?—saw ye not unroll’d | |
| O’er little ears and throat a twine of gold? | |
| And wore her lip the blown or budded rose? | |
| O did she reach through balmy pear and peach | |
| White arms for greeting—did ye heaven hold | 30 |
| In the orchard by the beach? | |
| |
SHEPHERD Nay, Colin, but I heard through walls of laurel | |
| A tide impassion’d brimming silent spaces, | |
| Guess’d its soft weight, and knew its hoarded coral | |
| Given and withdrawn to shyer farther places; | 35 |
| Methought each wave shook loose in long embraces | |
| Wild trees and tangle over shells auroral, | |
| And never wave but held all heaven’s faces, | |
| And seem’d to sweep a mirror’d moon asleep, | |
| To break and blanch among the wet wood-sorrel, | 40 |
| In the orchard by the deep. | |
| |
COLIN O Shepherd, leave to speak of ocean-brede, | |
| And crescents gliding o’er the cold sea-floor; | |
| All men may watch a risen tide recede, | |
| And scarlet secrets of the deep explore. | 45 |
| Were not your nymph’s fair face and footstep more | |
| Than foam and flake within a garden weed? | |
| More sweet than hymning seas her sweet love-lore? | |
| Her hair, her hand, more soft than feathers fann’d | |
| From sleeping doves, by small winds newly freed | 50 |
| In the orchard by the strand? | |
| |
SHEPHERD O dull of soul and senseless! get thee gone! | |
| What though the lyre of him who loves be strung | |
| To deep of heaven and deep of sea—alone | |
| The deep of love is evermore unsung! | 55 |
| Such music lieth hush upon the tongue. | |
| No, by the gods! not thou, nor any one | |
| Shall force these stammering lips to do it wrong, | |
| Nor babble o’er from common door to door | |
| What I, by favour of my gods, have known | 60 |
| In the orchard by the shore! | |
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