Читать книгу Poems of To-Day: an Anthology - Various - Страница 25

  Oh shall I never never be home again!

  Meadows of England shining in the rain

  Spread wide your daisied lawns: your ramparts green

  With briar fortify, with blossom screen

  Till my far morning—and O streams that slow

  And pure and deep through plains and playlands go,

  For me your love and all your kingcups store,

  And—dark militia of the southern shore,

  Old fragrant friends—preserve me the last lines

  Of that long saga which you sang me, pines,

  When, lonely boy, beneath the chosen tree

  I listened, with my eyes upon the sea.

  O traitor pines, you sang what life has found

  The falsest of fair tales.

  Earth blew a far-horn prelude all around,

  That native music of her forest home,

  While from the sea's blue fields and syren dales

  Shadows and light noon spectres of the foam

  Riding the summer gales

  On aery viols plucked an idle sound.

  Hearing you sing, O trees,

  Hearing you murmur, "There are older seas,

  That beat on vaster sands,

  Where the wise snailfish move their pearly towers

  To carven rocks and sculptured promont'ries,"

  Hearing you whisper, "Lands

  Where blaze the unimaginable flowers."

  Beneath me in the valley waves the palm,

  Beneath, beyond the valley, breaks the sea;

  Beneath me sleep in mist and light and calm

  Cities of Lebanon, dream-shadow-dim,

  Where Kings of Tyre and Kings of Tyre did rule

  In ancient days in endless dynasty,

  And all around the snowy mountains swim

  Like mighty swans, afloat in heaven's pool.

  But I will walk upon the wooded hill

  Where stands a grove, O pines, of sister pines,

  And when the downy twilight droops her wing

  And no sea glimmers and no mountain shines

  My heart shall listen still.

  For pines are gossip pines the wide world through

  And full of runic tales to sigh or sing.

  'Tis ever sweet through pines to see the sky

  Blushing a deeper gold or darker blue.

  'Tis ever sweet to lie

  On the dry carpet of the needles brown,

  And though the fanciful green lizard stir

  And windy odours light as thistledown

  Breathe from the lavdanon and lavender,

  Half to forget the wandering and pain,

  Half to remember days that have gone by,

  And dream and dream that I am home again!