No wild-foot Dryad haunts this leafless glade
With woodland lures, old weird lures chanted long;
No nightingale thrills dusk's embalméd shade
With all her incommunicable song,
Sorrow divine and sacramental wrong;
No panting Nymph, deliciously afraid,
Flies from no eager Faun among the trees;
No Satyr skilled to tune the cunning dance
Draws magic from his flute: the revel rout
With minstrelsy aflame
Gathers and breaks like mist: shy maids advance:
Youths leap to kiss ... No, there is none of these;
Joy hath departed hence, a noteless name,
And Love hath lived her ancient glories out.

The world grows old, and all its songs are sung;
The lute lies broken, and the silver strings
Are snapped and silent; where blithe laughter rung
In happy days, today no laughter rings;
No longer any glad-eyed lover sings
As lovers sang of yore, when love was young.
The world grows old, and all its tears are shed;
I have forgot to weep; no swift sense now
Of mortal gladness or immortal grief
Brings sudden ecstasy.
There is no pleasure left, no pain. And thou ...
What dost thou here, my soul, whence all is fled?
No dawn brings no new happiness for thee:
Love fades, the dreamer wakes, the dream is brief.

Yet have I heard- ah! long ago- a sound
Of elfin music through the twilight rolled,
And seen a Nymph deep-couched on forest ground:
Such love no mortal tongue hath ever told;
Lo! sunset barred the dying west with gold,
And faery splendours shone the twain around.
But night eternal veiled the tingling void,
Deep night, lone night, and from a thousand eyes
God gazed down on this grey world distraught
By moans and misery;
Where men lie weeping down at dusk, and rise
Weeping at dawn; where hopeless hope destroyed
At her own birth drags out more wearily
Each weary weary day, till death bring- naught.

Hush! a faint whisper stirs among the leaves,
And stills, and stirs again, a breathless sigh,
That shivers up the brown hillside and weaves
Dim tales of autumn's purpled mystery.
Winged with white sails athwart the paling sky
The stately hull of many a great cloud cleaves
Dawn's azure sea with rose-red keel and prow
Sapphirine, while a thousand throats of gold,
Scarce roused from the deep hush of slumbering night,
Make morning magical:
And, suddenly, God manifest, behold,
The risen sun, robed gloriously; who now
With rich libation ceremonial
Bathes the long vale in liquid rivers of light.

Light, healing light, exhaled from brows divine,
From God's imperial brows imperial day
Splendidly winging, and her bright wings shine
As she scattereth rapture abroad on men, that they
Fare gladlier forth on Life's untrodden way,
Having beheld God's immemorial sign.
Strong, joyous, calm, inviolate, and free,
Girdled with living song and crowned with mirth,
Bright form, whom Beauty and Gladness charioteer,
Irradiant as fame,
Ageless as thought! lo, on thy coming, Earth
Throbs with new being irresistibly
Wondering at Dawn's imperishable proclaim:
'He dwells with God, who dwells serenely here.'