| |
| OFT 1 by the marsh’s quaggy edge | |
| I heard the wind-swept rushes fall; | |
| Where through an overgrowth of sedge | |
| Rolled the slow mere funereal: | |
| I heard the music of the leaves | 5 |
| Unto the night-wind’s fingering, | |
| I saw the dropping forest-eaves | |
| Make in the mere their water-ring … | |
| |
| But, day by day about the marge | |
| Of this slow-brooding dreaminess, | 10 |
| The shadow of the past lay large, | |
| And brooded low and lustreless; | |
| Then vanished as I looked on it, | |
| Yet back returned with wider sweep, | |
| And broad upon my soul would sit, | 15 |
| Like a storm-cloud above the deep … | |
| |
| ‘I see (I cried) the waste of waves, | |
| That shifts from out the western tracts; | |
| I see the sun that ever laves | |
| With liquid gold their cataracts; | 20 |
| And night by night I see the moon | |
| Career and thwart the waves of cloud; | |
| I see great nature burgeon | |
| Through all her seasons, laughter-browed. | |
| |
| But what are these things unto me? | 25 |
| They lack not me, they are full-planned: | |
| I must have love in my degree, | |
| A human heart, a human hand. | |
| For oh! ’tis better far to share, | |
| Tho’ life all dark, all bitter be, | 30 |
| With human bosoms human care.’— | |
| I launched my boat upon the sea. | |
