Prefatory Sonnets

I     I purposed once to take my pen and write,     Not songs, like some, tormented and awry     With passion, but a cunning harmony     Of words and music caught from glen and height,     And lucid colours born of woodland light     And shining places where the sea-streams lie.     But this was when the heat of youth glowed white,     And since Ive put the faded purpose by.     I have no faultless fruits to offer you     Who read this book; but certain syllables     Herein are borrowed from unfooted dells     And secret hollows dear to noontide dew;     And these at least, though far between and few,     May catch the sense like subtle forest spells. II     So take these kindly, even though there be     Some notes that unto other lyres belong,     Stray echoes from the elder sons of song;     And think how from its neighbouring native sea     The pensive shell doth borrow melody.     I would not do the lordly masters wrong     By filching fair words from the shining throng     Whose music haunts me as the wind a tree.     Lo, when a stranger in soft Syrian glooms     Shot through with sunset, treads the cedar dells,     And hears the breezy ring of elfin bells     Far down be where the white-haired cataract booms,     He, faint with sweetness caught from forest smells,     Bears thence, unwitting, plunder of perfumes.