Not in lone splendour hung aloft the
night
And watching, with eternal lids
apart,
Like Nature's patient, sleepless
Eremite,
The moving waters at their
priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human
shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen
mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the
moors -
No - yet still stedfast, still
unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's
ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and
swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her
tender-taken breath,
And so live ever - or else swoon to
death.