Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Recollections of Love

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 ?: Belovéd ! 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--: O 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.

1807?, published 1817, 1828, 1829, 1834

(proofed against E. H. Coleridge's 1927 edition of STC's poems)