I NEVER saw that land before, And now can never see it again

Yet, as if by acquaintance hoar
Endeared, by gladness and by pain,
Great was the affection that I bore
To the valley and the river small,
The cattle, the grass, the bare ash trees,
The chickens from the farmsteads, all Elm-hidden, and the tributaries
Descending at equal interval
The blackthorns down along the brook
With wounds yellow as crocuses
Where yesterday the labourers hook
Had sliced them cleanly and the breeze
That hinted all and nothing spoke.

I neither expected anything
Nor yet remembered but some goal
I touched then and if I could sing
What would not even whisper my sul
As I went on my journeying, I should use, as the trees and birds did,
A language not to be betrayed
And what was hid should still be hid
Excepting from those like me made
Who answer when such whispers bid.

DARK is the forest and deep, and overhead

Hang stars like seeds of light
In vain, though not since they were sown was bred
Anything more bright.
And evermore mighty multitudes ride
About, nor enter in
Of the other multitudes that dwell inside
Never yet was one seen.

The forest foxglove is purple, the- marguerite

Outside is gold and white,
Nor can those that pluck either blossom greet
The others, day or night.

CELANDINE

THINKING of her had saddened me at first,
Until I saw the sun on the celandines lie
Redoubled, and she stood up like a flame,
A living thing, not what before I nursed,
The shadow I was growing to love almost,
The phantom, not the creature with bright eye
That I had thought, never to see, once lost.

She found the celandines of February
Always before us all.
Her nature and name
Were like those flowers, and now immediately
For a short swift eternity back she came,
Beautiful, happy, simply as when she wore
Her brightest bloom among the winter hues
Of all the world and I was happy too,
Seeing the blossoms and the maiden who
Had seen them with me Februarys before,
Bending to them as in and out she trod
And laughed, with locks sweeping the mossy sod.

But this was a dream the flowers were not true,
Until I stooped to pluck from the grass there
One of five petals and I smelt the juice
Which made me sigh, remembering she was no more,
Gone like a never perfectly recalled air...