For soon you lose the landscape through Absence, sorrow, eyes grown true To the naked limbs which show Buds that never more may blow. Now you know the lame were straight Ere you knew them, and the fate Of the old is yet to die. Now you know the dead who lie In the graves you saw where first The landscape on your vision burst, Were not always dead, and now Shadows rest upon the brow Of the souls as young as you. Some are gone, though years are few Since you roamed with them the hills. So the landscape changes, wills All the changes, did it try Its promises to justify?... * * * * * For you return and find it bare: There is no heaven of golden air. Your eyes around the horizon rove, A clump of trees is Leese's Grove. And what's the hedgerow, what's the pond? A wallow where the vagabond Beast will not drink, and where the arch Of heaven in the days of March Refrains to look. A blinding rain Beats the once gilded window pane. John, the poor wretch, is gone, but bread Tempts other feet that path to tread Between the barn and house, and brave The March rain and the winds that rave. ... O, landscape I am one who stands Returned with pale and broken hands Glad for the day that I have known, And finds the deserted doorway strown With shoulder blade and spinal bone. And you who nourished me and bred I find the spirit from you fled. You gave me dreams,'twas at your breast My soul's beginning rose and pressed My steps afar at last and shaped A world elusive, which escaped Whatever love or thought could find Beyond the tireless wings of mind. Yet grown by you, and feeding on Your strength as mother, you are gone When I return from living, trace My steps to see how I began, And deeply search your mother face To know your inner self, the place For which you bore me, sent me forth To wander, south or east or north. ... Now the familiar landscape lies With breathless breast and hollow eyes. It knows me not, as I know not Its secret, spirit, all forgot Its kindred look is, as I stand A stranger in an unknown land. * * * * *