Unthinkable Aladdin, dawn and dark, Scribbles and scribbles, like a German clerk. We see the fact, but tell, O tell us why? My reverend washman and wise butler cry. Meanwhile at times the manifold Imperishable perfumes of the past And coloured pictures rise on me thick and fast: And I remember the white rime, the loud Lamplitten city, shops, and the changing crowd; And I remember home and the old time, The winding river, the white moving rhyme, The autumn robin by the river-side That pipes in the grey eve. The old lady (so they say), but I Admire your young vitality. Still brisk of foot, still busy and keen In and about and up and down. I hear you pass with bustling feet The long verandahs round, and beat Your bell, and “Lotu! Lotu!” cry; Thus calling our queer company, In morning or in evening dim, To prayers and the oft mangled hymn. All day you watch across the sky The silent, shining cloudlands ply, That, huge as countries, swift as birds, Beshade the isles by halves and thirds, Till each with battlemented crest Stands anchored in the ensanguined west, An Alp enchanted. All the day You hear the exuberant wind at play, In vast, unbroken voice uplift, In roaring tree, round whistling clift. AIR OF DIABELLI’S CALL it to mind, O my love. Dear were your eyes as the day, Bright as the day and the sky; Like the stream of gold and the sky above, Dear were your eyes in the grey. We have lived, my love, O, we have lived, my love! Now along the silent river, azure Through the sky’s inverted image, Softly swam the boat that bore our love, Swiftly ran the shallow of our love Through the heaven’s inverted image, In the reedy mazes round the river. See along the silent river, See of old the lover’s shallop steer. Berried brake and reedy island, Heaven below and only heaven above. Through the sky’s inverted image Swiftly swam the boat that bore our love. Berried brake and reedy island, Mirrored flower and shallop gliding by. All the earth and all the sky were ours, Silent sat the wafted lovers, Bound with grain and watched by all the sky, Hand to hand and eye to . . . eye. Days of April, airs of Eden, Call to mind how bright the vanished angel hours, Golden hours of evening, When our boat drew homeward filled with flowers. O darling, call them to mind; love the past, my love. Days of April, airs of Eden. How the glory died through golden hours, And the shining moon arising; How the boat drew homeward filled with flowers. Age and winter close us slowly in. Level river, cloudless heaven, Islanded reed mazes, silver weirs; How the silent boat with silver Threads the inverted forest as she goes, Broke the trembling green of mirrored trees. O, remember, and remember How the berries hung in garlands.