For certainly not thus, Then or thereafter, I Loved ever. Between us Decide, good Love, before I die. Only, that once I loved By this one argument Is very plainly proved: I, loving not, am different. HOME NOT the end: but there's nothing more. Sweet Summer and Winter rude I have loved, and friendship and love, The crowd and solitude: But I know them: I weary not; But all that they mean I know. I would go back again home Now. Yet how should I go? This is my grief. That land, My home, I have never seen; No traveller tells of it, However far he has been. Afid could I discover it, I fear my happiness there, Or my pain, might be dreams of return Here, to these things that were. Remembering ills, though slight Yet irremediable, Brings a worse, an impurer pang Than remembering what was well. No: I cannot go back, And would not if I could. Until blindness come, I must wait And blink at what is not good. ASPENS ALL day and night, save winter, every weather, Above the inn, the smithy, and the shop, The aspens at the cross-roads talk together Of rain, until their last leaves fall from the top. Out of the blacksmith's cavern comes the ringing Of hammer, shoe, and anvil; out of the inn The clink, the hum, the roar, the random singing-- The sounds that for these fifty years have been. The whisper of the aspens is not drowned, And over lightless pane and footless road, Empty as sky, with every other sound Not ceasing, calls their ghosts from their abode, A silent smithy, a silent inn, nor fails In the bare moonlight or the thick-furred gloom, In tempest or the night of nightingales, To turn the cross-roads to a ghostly room. And it would be the same were no house near. Over all sorts of weather, men, and times, Aspens must shake their leaves and men may hear But need not listen, more than to my rhymes. Whatever wind blows, while they and I have leaves We cannot other than an aspen be That ceaselessly, unreasonably grieves, Or so men think who like a different tree. AN OLD SONG I WAS not apprenticed nor ever dwelt in famous Lincolnshire; I've served one master ill and well much more than seven year; And never took up to poaching as you shall quickly find; But 'tis my delight of a shiny night in the season of the year. I roamed where nobody had a right but keepers and squires, and there I sought for nests, wild flowers, oak sticks, and moles, both far and near. And had to run from farmers, and learnt the Lincolnshire song: "Oh, 'tis my delight of a shiny night in the season of the year." I took those walks years after, talking with friend or dear, Or solitary musing; but when the moon shone clear I had no joy or sorrow that could not be expressed By "'Tis my delight of a shiny night in the season of the year."