Poem by Robert Seymour Bridges

Shorter Poems. Book V. 13. “A Song of My Heart, as the Sun Peered o’er the Sea”

    A song of my heart, as the sun peered o’er the sea,
          Was born at morning to me:
    And out of my treasure-house it chose
          A melody, that arose

    Of all fair sounds that I love, remembered together
          In one; and I knew not whether
    From waves of rustling wheat it was,
          Recoveringly that pass:

    Or a hum of bees in the queenly robes of the lime:
          Or a descant in pairing time
    Of warbling birds: or watery bells
          Of rivulets in the hills:

    Or whether on blazing downs a high lark’s hymn
            Alone in the azure dim:
    Or a sough of pines, when the midnight wold
            Is solitary and cold:

    Or a lapping river-ripple all day chiding
            The bow of my wherry gliding
    Down Thames, between his flowery shores
            Re-echoing to the oars:

    Or anthem notes, wherever in archèd quires
            The unheeded music twires,
    And, centuries by, to the stony shade
            Flies following and to fade:

    Or a homely prattle of children’s voices gay
            ’Mong garden joys at play:
    Or a sundown chaunting of solemn rooks:
            Or memory of my books,

    Which hold the words that poets in many a tongue
            To the irksome world have sung:
    Or the voice, my happy lover, of thee
            Now separated from me.

    A ruby of fire in the burning sleep of my brain
            Long hid my thought had lain,
    Forgotten dreams of a thousand days
            Ingathering to its rays,

    The light of life in darkness tempering long;
            Till now a perfect song,
    A jewel of jewels it leapt above
            To the coronal of my love.

1. Shorter Poems. Book II. 4. Wooing
2. Shorter Poems. Book III. 16. Song (I love my lady’s eyes)
3. Shorter Poems. Book I. 17. Triolet (All women born are so perverse)
4. Shorter Poems. Book II. 8. Spring. Ode I
5. Shorter Poems. Book IV. 25. “Say Who Is This with Silvered Hair”

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