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.