Cambridge, 1920
XII - THE PILGRIMAGE
Beside a deep and mossy well
In the dark starless night I lay;
And dropping water like a bell,
Like a bell ringing far away,
Struck liquid notes in monotone,--
An echo of a distant bell
Tolling the knell of yesterday.
Deep down beneath the mossy ground
The liquid notes in monotone
Kept dropping, dropping endlessly,
And as I listened, over me
Crept like a mist a filmy spell;
My spirit's waving wings were bound,
And dreams came that were not my own.
Half-sleeping, half-awake, I heard
The drowsy chirp of a forest bird,
And the wind came up and the grasses stirred
And the curtaining woods that cluster round
That resonantly-echoing well
Shook all their leaves with silver sound
Like voices murmuring in a shell.
Was it the past that lived again
In that nocturnal murmuring,
Waking a hidden voice to sing
Deep in my heart of other times
Whose memory long entombed had lain
Covered with all the dust of the years?...
Falling in splashing tears
The wet notes drop in liquid chimes,
And the white fingers of the breeze
Gather a song from the melodious trees....
There is a hand whiter than pearl
That plucks a lute's monotonous strings;
O starlight phantom of a girl
What lyric soul around thee sings,
And what divine companionship
Taught that entwining music to thy fingers,
And that unearthly music to thy lips?
She pauses, and the echo lingers
Hovering like wings upon the air.
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