Future Pastoral

Dearest, today I found A lonely spot, such as we two have loved, Where two might lie upon Favonian ground Peering to faint horizons far-removed: A green and gentle fell That steepens to a rugged canyon's rim, Where voices of vague waters fall and swell And pines far down in sky-blue dimness swim. Toward the sunset lands, A leafless tree, from tender slopes of spring, Holds out its empty boughs like empty hands That vainly seek some distance-hidden thing. Strange, that my wandering feet, In all the years, had never known this place, Where beauty, with a glamor wild and sweet, Awaits the final witchcraft of your face. Upon this secret hill I gave my dark bereavement to the sun, My sorrow to the flowing air . . . until Your tresses and the grass were somehow one, And in my prescient dream I seemed to find An unborn joy, a future memory Of you, and love, and sunlight and the wind On the same grass, beneath the selfsame tree.