'The singing birds are come, but not thy voice;'
And to the sea they send their fragrant breath—
'Roams now the Child in thy dear charge' they call;
And voiceless is the beach, and echo flown;
And Ocean's self, whose benedictions move
Still blessèd in thy blood, sets in to shore,
And landward calls the wandering waves with him;
But One no more he shepherds whom he loved.
O, thou ungrateful, why dost thou delay?
Too far into the West thy roaming is!
Too long upon thy ocean-cherished eyes,
Brown, bleak, and bare, withers the wind-blown waste;
No fresh-turned field, no glade of violets there,
Nor far gleams of the emerald winter-wheat,
Nor drifts of orchard-blossoms on the hills,
Nor garden-plot, nor tree, nor lilac-spray!
Now homeward through the moonlight-darkened fields
The lover goes; the fire-flies flash; but he
Sees one sweet face that held the rosy West"—
As one who thinks of her he may not love,
