To Henry Halloran

You know I left my forest home full loth,     And those weird ways I knew so well and long,     Dishevelled with their sloping sidelong growth     Of twisted thorn and kurrajong.     It seems to me, my friend (and this wild thought     Of all wild thoughts, doth chiefly make me bleed),     That in those hills and valleys wonder-fraught,     I loved and lost a noble creed.     A splendid creed! But let me even turn     And hide myself from what Ive seen, and try     To fathom certain truths you know, and learn     The Beauty shining in your sky:     Remembering you in ardent autumn nights,     And Stenhouse near you, like a fine stray guest     Of other days, with all his lore of lights     So manifold and manifest!     Then hold me firm. I cannot choose but long     For that which lies and burns beyond my reach,     Suggested in your steadfast, subtle song     And his most marvellous speech!     For now my soul goes drifting back again,     Ay, drifting, drifting, like the silent snow     While scattered sheddings, in a fall of rain,     Revive the dear lost Long Ago!     The time I, loitering by untrodden fens,     Intent upon low-hanging lustrous skies,     Heard mellowed psalms from sounding southern glens     Euroma, dear to dreaming eyes!     And caught seductive tokens of a voice     Half maddened with the dim, delirious themes     Of perfect Love, and the immortal choice     Of starry faces Astral dreams!     That last was yours! And if you sometimes find     An alien darkness on the front of things,     Sing none the less for Life, nor fall behind,     Like me, with trailing, tired wings!     Yea, though the heavy Earth wears sackcloth now     Because she hath the great prophetic grief     Which makes me set my face one way, and bow     And falter for a far belief,     Be faithful yet for all, my brave bright peer,     In that rare light you hold so true and good;     And find me something clearer than the clear     White spaces of Infinitude.