Poem by Robert Seymour Bridges

Shorter Poems. Book I. 11. “Long Are the Hours the Sun Is Above”

Long are the hours the sun is above,
But when evening comes I go home to my love.

I’m away the daylight hours and more,
Yet she comes not down to open the door.

She does not meet me upon the stair,—
She sits in my chamber and waits for me there.

As I enter the room she does not move:
I always walk straight up to my love;

And she lets me take my wonted place
At her side, and gaze in her dear dear face.

There as I sit, from her head thrown back
Her hair falls straight in a shadow black.

Aching and hot as my tired eyes be,
She is all that I wish to see.

And in my wearied and toil-dinned ear,
She says all things that I wish to hear.

Dusky and duskier grows the room,
Yet I see her best in the darker gloom.

When the winter eves are early and cold,
The firelight hours are a dream of gold.

And so I sit here night by night,
In rest and enjoyment of love’s delight.

But a knock at the door, a step on the stair
Will startle, alas, my love from her chair.

If a stranger comes she will not stay:
At the first alarm she is off and away.

And he wonders, my guest, usurping her throne,
That I sit so much by myself alone.

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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