Some days there be when the loom is still
And my soul is sad as an autumn hill,
But how to tell the blessed time
When my heart is one glowing prayer of rhyme! 
Think on the humming afternoon
Within some busy wood in June,
When nettle patches, drunk with the sun,
Are fiery outposts of the shade;
While gnats keep up a dizzy reel,
And the grasshopper, perched upon his blade,
Loud drones his fairy threshing-wheel:—­
Hour when some poet-wit might feign
The drowsy tune of the throbbing air
The weaving of the gossamer
In secret nooks of wood and lane—­
The gossamer, silk night-robes of the flowers,
Fluttered apart by amorous morning hours. 
Yea, as the weaving of the gossamer,
If truly that the mystic golden boom,
Is the strange rapture of my hidden loom,
As I sit in the light of the thought of her;
And it weaveth, weaveth, day by day,
This parti-coloured roundelay;
Weaving for ease of misery,
Weaving this rhyme of my lady and me,
Weaving, weaving this warp of rhyme
For lovers in the after-time.

My lady, lover, may never be mine
In the same sweet way that thine is thine,
My lady and I may never stand
By the holy altar hand in hand,
My lady and I may never rest
Through the golden midnight breast to breast,
Nor share long days of happy light
Sweet moving in each other’s sight: 
Yea, even must we ever miss
The honey of the chastest kiss.

III

But, Song, arise thee on a greater wing,
Nor twitter robin-like of love, nor sing
A pretty dalliance with grief—­but try
Some metre like a sky,
Wherein to set
Stars that may linger yet
When I, thy master, shall have come to die. 
            Twitter and tweet
              Thy carollings
              Of little things,
            Of fair and sweet;
            For it is meet,
              O robin red! 
            That little theme
              Hath little song,
              That little head
            Hath little dream,
              And long. 
But we have starry business, such a grief
As Autumn’s, dead by some forgotten sheaf,
While all the distance echoes of the wain;
Grief as an ocean’s for some sudden isle
Of living green that stayed with it a while,
  Then to oblivious deluge plunged again! 
Grief as of Alps that yearn but never reach,
  Grief as of Death for Life, of Night for Day: 
Such grief, O Song, how hast thou strength to teach,
  How hope to make assay?

IV

ONCE

Once we met, and then there came
Like a Pentecostal flame,
    A word;
And I said not,
Only thought,
    She heard! 
All I never say but sing,
Worshipping;
Wrapt in the hidden tongue
Of an ambiguous song.