Here the flame that was ash, shrine that was void,
lost in the haunted wood,
I have tended and loved,
year upon year, I in the
solitude
Waiting, quiet and glad-eyed in the dark, knowing that
once a gleam
Glowed
and went through the wood. Still I abode strong
in a golden dream,
Unrecaptured.
For I, I that had faith,
knew that a face would glance
One day, white in the dim woods, and a voice call, and
a radiance
Fill the
grove, and the fire suddenly leap . . . and, in
the heart of it,
End of labouring, you! Therefore I kept ready
the altar,
lit
The flame, burning apart.
Face of my dreams vainly in vision white
Gleaming down to me, lo!
hopeless I rise now. For
about midnight
Whispers grew through the wood suddenly, strange cries
in the
boughs above
Grated, cries like a laugh. Silent and black then through
the sacred grove
Great birds flew,
as a dream, troubling the leaves, passing
at length.
I
knew
Long expected and long loved, that afar, God of the dim
wood, you
Somewhere lay, as a child sleeping,
a child suddenly reft
from mirth,
White and wonderful yet, white in your youth, stretched
upon foreign earth,
God,
immortal and dead!
Therefore I go; never to rest, or win
Peace, and worship of you more, and the dumb
wood and
the shrine therein.