Recollections of Love

I     How warm this woodland wild Recess!     Love surely hath been breathing here;     And this sweet bed of heath, my dear!     Swells up, then sinks with faint caress,     As if to have you yet more near. II     Eight springs have flown, since last I lay     On sea-ward Quantock's heathy hills,     Where quiet sounds from hidden rills     Float hear and there, like things astray,     And high o'er head the sky-lark shrills.      III          No voice as yet had made the air     Be music with your name; yet why     That asking look? that yearning sigh?     That sense of promise every where?     Belovd! flew your spirit by?      IV     As when a mother doth explore     The rose-mark on her long-lost child,     I met, I loved you, maiden mild!     As whom I long had loved before     So deeply had I been beguiled.      V          You stood before me like a thought,     A dream remembered in a dream.     But when those meek eyes first did seem     To tell me, Love within you wrought     O Greta, dear domestic stream!      VI          Has not, since then, Love's prompture deep,     Has not Love's whisper evermore     Been ceaseless, as thy gentle roar?     Sole voice, when other voices sleep,     Dear under-song in clamor's hour.