INTRODUCTION.

I sought the long clear twilights of the North,
When, from its nest of trees, my father’s house
Sees the Aurora deepen into dawn
Far northward in the East, o’er the hill-top;
And fronts the splendours of the northern West,
Where sunset dies into that ghostly gleam
That round the horizon creepeth all the night
Back to the jubilance of gracious morn. 
I found my home in homeliness unchanged;
For love that maketh home, unchangeable,
Received me to the rights of sonship still. 
O vaulted summer-heaven, borne on the hills! 
Once more thou didst embrace me, whom, a child,
Thy drooping fulness nourished into joy. 
Once more the valley, pictured forth with sighs,
Rose on my present vision, and, behold! 
In nothing had the dream bemocked the truth: 
The waters ran as garrulous as before;
The wild flowers crowded round my welcome feet;
The hills arose and dwelt alone in heaven;
And all had learned new tales against I came. 
Once more I trod the well-known fields with him
Whose fatherhood had made me search for God’s;
And it was old and new like the wild flowers,
The waters, and the hills, but dearer far.

Once on a day, my cousin Frank and I,
Drove on a seaward road the dear white mare
Which oft had borne me to the lonely hills. 
Beside me sat a maiden, on whose face
I had not looked since we were boy and girl;
But the old friendship straightway bloomed anew. 
The heavens were sunny, and the earth was green;
The harebells large, and oh! so plentiful;
While butterflies, as blue as they, danced on,
Borne purposeless on pulses of clear joy,
In sportive time to their Aeolian clang. 
That day as we talked on without restraint,
Brought near by memories of days that were,
And therefore are for ever—­by the joy
Of motion through a warm and shining air,
By the glad sense of freedom and like thoughts,
And by the bond of friendship with the dead,
She told the tale which I would mould anew
To a more lasting form of utterance.

For I had wandered back to childish years;
And asked her if she knew a ruin old,
Whose masonry, descending to the waves,
Faced up the sea-cliff at whose rocky feet
The billows fell and died along the coast. 
’Twas one of my child marvels.  For, each year,
We turned our backs upon the ripening corn,
And sought the borders of the desert sea. 
O joy of waters! mingled with the fear
Of a blind force that knew not what to do,
But spent its strength of waves in lashing aye
The rocks which laughed them into foam and flight.