RECOLLECTIONS
Years have sped from us under the sun
Through blossom and snow-tides twenty-one,
Since first your hand as a friend's was mine,
In a season whose days are yet honey and wine
To the pale close lips of Remembrance, shed
By the cupbearer Love for desire of the dead:
And the weeds I send you may half seem flowers
In eyes that were lit by the light of its hours.
For the life (if at all there be life) in them grew
From the sun then risen on a young day's dew,
When ever in August holiday times
I rode or swam through a rapture of rhymes,
Over heather and crag, and by scaur and by stream,
Clothed with delight by the might of a dream,
With the sweet sharp wind blown hard through my hair,
On eyes enkindled and head made bare,
Reining my rhymes into royal order
Through honied leagues of the northland border;
Or loosened a song to seal for me
A kiss on the clamorous mouth of the sea.
Through blossom and snow-tides twenty-one,
Since first your hand as a friend's was mine,
In a season whose days are yet honey and wine
To the pale close lips of Remembrance, shed
By the cupbearer Love for desire of the dead:
And the weeds I send you may half seem flowers
In eyes that were lit by the light of its hours.
For the life (if at all there be life) in them grew
From the sun then risen on a young day's dew,
When ever in August holiday times
I rode or swam through a rapture of rhymes,
Over heather and crag, and by scaur and by stream,
Clothed with delight by the might of a dream,
With the sweet sharp wind blown hard through my hair,
On eyes enkindled and head made bare,
Reining my rhymes into royal order
Through honied leagues of the northland border;
Or loosened a song to seal for me
A kiss on the clamorous mouth of the sea.
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