The Piper

I will not lift the door-latch, I will not step in From the dark fields and the starlight and the bent and whin: All about the stone gables, in the dusk alone You shall hear my pipe playing by your own hearth-stone. I have no joy of your banquets nor your lighted halls: I flute not for your dancing at gay routs and balls. When the last guest has departed, and the lights have died, Come I with my shrill piping up the lone hillside. I bring no sheaf of ballads of wars and dead wrongs: All across the wide world God has taught me my songs, - Old tunes and unwritten, wrought in far years, In a strange tongue and tender, with a burden of tears. O hearts that are restless, O hearts that repine, Knowledge; of all sorrows and of all dreams is mire. With a song of dim longing and of lost delight I will catch at your heart-strings in the dark of the night.