XIV Then I reach, I must believe, It reaches, and past retrieve XV And must follow as I require, Essence and earth-attire, To the source of the tractile fire: XVI Till the house called hers, not mine, With a growing weight Seems to suffocate If she break not its leaden line And escape from its close confine. XVII Out of doors into the night! On to the maze Of the wild wood-ways, Not turning to left nor right From the pathway, blind with sight XVIII Making thro' rain and wind O'er the broken shrubs, 'Twixt the stems and stubs, With a still, composed, strong mind, Not a care for the world behind XIX Swifter and still more swift, Doth to joy increase In the wide blind eyes uplift Thro' the darkness and the drift! XX While I-to the shape, I too And relax not a gesture due, As I see my belief come true. XXI For, there have I drawn or no Do my fingers.dip In a flame which again they throw XXII Ha! was the hair so first? What, unfilleted, Made alive, and spread Through the void with a rich outburst, Chestnut gold-interspersed ? XXIII Like the doors of a casket-shrine, See, on either side, Her two arms divide Till the heart betwixt makes sign, "Take me, for I am thine?" XXIV "Now-now"-the door is heard! "Now!" and, at call the third, XXV On doth she march and on Herself, now the dream is done And the shadow and she are one. How well I know what I mean to do When the long dark autumn evenings come: And where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue ? With the music of all thy voices, dumb In life's November too! II I shall be found by the fire, suppose, O'er a great wise book, as beseemeth age; While the shutters flap as the cross-wind blows, And I turn the page, and I turn the page, Not verse now, only prose! III Till the young ones whisper, finger on lip, "To cut from the hazels by the creek "A mainmast for our ship!" IV I shall be at it indeed, my friends! V The outside frame, like your hazel-trees— And a rarer sort succeeds to these, And we slope to Italy at last And youth, by green degrees. VI I follow wherever I am led, Knowing so well the leader's hand: Oh woman-country, wooed not wed, Loved all the more by earth's male-lands, Laid to their hearts instead! VII Look at the ruined chapel again Half-way up in the Alpine gorge! Is that a tower, I point you plain, VIII A turn, and we stand in the heart of things ; The woods are round us, heaped and dim; From slab to slab how it slips and springs, The thread of water single and slim, Through the ravage some torrent brings ! IX Does it feed the little lake below? How sharp the silver spear-heads charge When Alp meets heaven in snow! X On our other side is the straight-up rock ; And a path is kept 'twixt the gorge and it By boulder-stones where lichens mock The marks on a moth, and small ferns fit Their teeth to the polished block. XI Oh the sense of the yellow mountain-flowers, XII That crimson the creeper's leaf across Like a splash of blood, intense, abrupt, O'er a shield else gold from rim to boss, |