Edmund Charles Blunden

The Watermill

  I’ll rise at midnight and I’ll rove
  Up the hill and down the drove
    That leads to the old unnoticed mill,
  And think of one I used to love:
  There stooping to the hunching wall
    I’ll stare into the rush of stars
  Or bubbles that the waterfall
    Brings forth and breaks in ceaseless wars.

  The shelving hills have made a fourm
  Where the mill holdings shelter warm,
    And here I came with one I loved
  To watch the seething millions swarm.
  But long ago she grew a ghost
    Though walking with me every day;
  Even when her beauty burned me most
    She to a spectre dimmed away--

  Until though cheeks all morning-bright
  And black eyes gleaming life’s delight
    And singing voice dwelt in my sense,
  Herself paled on my inward sight.
  She grew one whom deep waters glassed.
    Then in dismay I hid from her,
  And lone by talking brooks at last
    I found a Love still lovelier.

  O lost in tortured days of France!
  Yet still the moment comes like chance
    Born in the stirring midnight’s sigh
  Or in the wild wet sunset’s glance:
  And how I know not but this stream
    Still sounds like vision’s voice, and still
  I watch with Love the bubbles gleam,
    I walk with Love beside the mill.

  The heavens are thralled with cloud, yet gray
  Half-moonlight swims the fields till day,
    The stubbled fields, the bleaching woods;--
  Even this bleak hour is stolen away
  By this shy water falling low,
    And calling low the whole night through,
  And calling back the long ago
    And richest world I ever knew.

  The hop-kiln fingers cobweb-white
  With discord dim turned left and right,
    And when the wind was south and small
  The sea’s far whisper drowsed the night;
  Scarce more than mantling ivy’s voice
    That in the tumbling water trailed.
  Love’s spirit called me to rejoice
    When she to nothingness had paled:

  For Love the daffodils shone here
  In grass the greenest of the year,
    Daffodils seemed the sunset lights
  And silver birches budded clear:
  And all from east to west there strode
    Great shafted clouds in argent air,
  The shining chariot-wheels of God,
    And still Love’s moment sees them there.