Vii. _Three Grey Days._

If she would come, now, and say, What will you Lover?-- She who has the fairest gifts of all the earth to give-- Think you I should ask some tremendous thing to prove her, Her life, say, and all her love, so long as she might live? Should I touch her hair? her hands? her garments, even? Nay! for such rewards the gods their own good time have set! Once, these were all mine: the least, poor one was heaven: Now, lest she remember, I pray that she forget.

Merely should I ask--ah! she would not refuse them Who still seems very kind when I meet with her in dreams-- Only three of our old days, and--should she help to choose them Would the first not be in April, beside the sudden streams?...... Once, upon a morning, up the path that we had taken, We saw Spring come where the willow-buds are grey; Heard the high hills, as with tread of armies, shaken; Felt the strong sun--O, the glory of that day!

And then--what? one afternoon of quiet summer weather O, woodlands and meadow-lands along the blue St. John, My birch finds a path--though your rafts lie close together-- Then O! what starry miles before the grey o' the dawn!........ I have met the new day, among the misty islands, Come with whine of saw-mills and whirr of hidden wings, Gleam of dewy cobwebs, smell of grassy highlands.-- Ah! the blood grows young again thinking of these things.

Then, last and best of all! Though all else were found hollow Would Time not send a little space, before the Autumn's close, And lead us up the road--the old road we used to follow Among the sunset hills till the Hunter's Moon arise?...... Then, Home through the poplar-wood! damp across our faces The grey leaves that fall, the moths that flutter by: Yea! this for me, now, of all old hours and places, To keep when I am dead, Time, until she come to die.