Samuel Taylor Coleridge — Recollections of Love

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