Sibylline Leaves (Coleridge)/Recollections of Love

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

RECOLLECTIONS OF LOVE.

 

I.

How warm this woodland wild Recess!

Love surely hath been breathing here.
And this sweet bed of heath, my dear!
Swells up, then sinks with faint caress,
As if to have you yet more near.

II.

Eight springs have flown, since last I lay

On sea-ward Quantock's heathy hills,
Where quiet sounds from hidden rills
Float here and there, like things astray,
And high o'er head the sky-lark shrills.

III.

No voice as yet had made the air

Be music with your name: yet why
That asking look? That yearning sigh?
That sense of promise every where?
Beloved! flew your spirit by?

IV.

As when a mother doth explore

The rose-mark on her long lost child,
I met, I lov'd you, maiden mild!
As whom I long had lov'd before—
So deeply had I been beguil'd.

V.

You stood before me like a thought,

A dream remember'd in a dream.
But when those meek eyes first did seem
To tell me, Love within you wrought—
O Greta, dear domestic stream!

VI.

Has not, since then, Love's prompture deep,

Has not Love's whisper evermore,
Been ceaseless, as thy gentle roar?
Sole voice, when other voices sleep,
Dear under-song in Clamor's hour.