Here far away, seen from the topmost cliff, Filling with purple gloom the vacancies Between the tufted hills the sloping seas Hung in mid-heaven, and half-way down rare sails, White as white clouds, floated from sky to sky. Oh! pleasant breast of waters, quiet bay, Like to a quiet mind in the loud world, Where the chafed breakers of the outer sea Sunk powerless, even as anger falls aside, And withers on the breast of peaceful love, Thou didst receive that belt of pines, that fledged The hills that watch'd thee, as Love watcheth Love,-- In thine own essence, and delight thyself To make it wholly thine on sunny days. Keep thou thy name of 'Lover's bay': See, Sirs, Even now the Goddess of the Past, that takes The heart, and sometimes toucheth but one string, That quivers, and is silent, and sometimes Sweeps suddenly all its half-moulder'd chords To an old melody, begins to play On those first-moved fibres of the brain. I come, Great mistress of the ear and eye: Oh! lead me tenderly, for fear the mind Rain thro' my sight, and strangling sorrow weigh Mine utterance with lameness. Tho' long years Have hallowed out a valley and a gulf Betwixt the native land of Love and me, Breathe but a little on me, and the sail Will draw me to the rising of the sun, The lucid chambers of the morning star, And East of life. Permit me, friend, I prithee, To pass my hand across my brows, and muse On those dear hills, that nevermore will meet The sight that throbs and aches beneath my touch, As tho' there beat a heart in either eye; For when the outer lights are darken'd thus, The memory's vision hath a keener edge. It grows upon me now--the semicircle Of dark blue waters and the narrow fringe Of curving beach--its wreaths of dripping green-- Its pale pink shells--the summer-house aloft That open'd on the pines with doors of glass, A mountain nest the pleasure boat that rock'd Light-green with its own shadow, keel to keel, Upon the crispings of the dappled waves That blanched upon its side. O Love, O Hope, They come, they crowd upon me all at once, Moved from the cloud of unforgotten things, That sometimes on the horizon of the mind Lies folded--often sweeps athwart in storm-- They flash across the darkness of my brain, The many pleasant days, the moolit nights, The dewy dawnings and the amber eyes, When thou and I, Camilla, thou and I Were borne about the bay, or safely moor'd Beneath some low brow'd cavern, where the wave Plash'd sapping its worn ribs (the while without, And close above us, sang the wind-tost pine, And shook its earthly socket, for we heard, In rising and in falling with the tide, Close by our ears, the huge roots strain and creak), Eye feeding upon eye with deep intent; And mine, with love too high to be express'd Arrested in its sphere, and ceasing from