Recollections of Love

Recollections of Love
  by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  I
  How warm this woodland wild Recess !
  Love surely hath been breathing here ;
  And this sweet bed of heath, my dear !
  Swells up, then sinks with faint caress,
  As if to have you yet more near.
  II
  Eight springs have flown, since last I lay
  On sea-ward Quantock's heathy hills,
  Where quiet sounds from hidden rills
  Float hear and there, like things astray,
  And high o'er head the sky-lark shrills.
  III
  No voice as yet had made the air
    Be music with your name ; yet why
  That asking look ? that yearning sigh ?
  That sense of promise every where ?
  Beloved! flew your spirit by ?
  IV
  As when a mother doth explore
  The rose-mark on her long-lost child,
  I met, I loved you, maiden mild !
  As whom I long had loved before--
  So deeply had I been beguiled.
  V
  You stood before me like a thought,
  A dream remembered in a dream.
  But when those meek eyes first did seem
  To tell me, Love within you wrought--
  Greta, dear domestic stream!
  VI
  Has not, since then, Love's prompture deep,
  Has not Love's whisper evermore
  Been ceaseless, as thy gentle roar ?
    Sole voice, when other voices sleep,
  Dear under-song in clamor's hour.