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Title: Gorse
Author: Alfred Noyes [
More Titles by Noyes]
Between my face and the warm blue sky
The crisp white clouds go sailing by,
And the only sound is the sound of your breathing,
The song of a bird and the sea's long sigh.
Here, on the downs, as a tale re-told
The sprays of the gorse are a-blaze with gold,
As of old, on the sea-washed hills of my boyhood,
Breathing the same sweet scent as of old.
Under a ragged golden spray
The great sea sparkles far away,
Beautiful, bright, as my heart remembers
Many a dazzle of waves in May.
Long ago as I watched them shine
Under the boughs of fir and pine,
Here I watch them to-day and wonder,
Here, with my love's hand warm in mine.
The soft wings pass that we used to chase,
Dreams that I dreamed had left not a trace,
The same, the same, with the bars of crimson
The green-veined white, with its floating grace,
The same to the least bright fleck on their wings!
And I close my eyes, and a lost bird sings,
And a far sea sighs, and the old sweet fragrance
Wraps me round with the dear dead springs,
Wraps me round with the springs to be
When lovers that think not of you or me
Laugh, but our eyes will be closed in darkness,
Closed to the sky and the gorse and the sea,
And the same great glory of ragged gold
Once more, once more, as a tale re-told
Shall whisper their hearts with the same sweet fragrance
And their warm hands cling, as of old, as of old.
Dead and un-born, the same blue skies
Cover us! Love, as I read your eyes,
Do I not know whose love enfolds us,
As we fold the past in our memories,
Past, present, future, the old and the new?
From the depths of the grave a cry breaks through
And trembles, a sky-lark blind in the azure,
The depths of the all-enfolding blue.
O, resurrection of folded years
Deep in our hearts, with your smiles and tears,
Dead and un-born shall not He remember
Who folds our cry in His heart, and hears.
[The end]
Alfred Noyes's poem: Gorse
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