Samuel Taylor Coleridge               Recollections of Love                                 I How warm this woodland wild Recess!     Love surely hath been breathing here;     And this sweet bed of heath, my dear! Swells up, then sinks with faint caress,     As if to have you yet more near.                                 II Eight springs have flown, since last I lay     On sea-ward Quantock's heathy hills,     Where quiet sounds from hidden rills Float hear and there, like things astray,     And high o'er head the sky-lark shrills.                               III No voice as yet had made the air     Be music with your name; yet why     That asking look? that yearning sigh? That sense of promise every where?     Beloved! flew your spirit by?                                 IV As when a mother doth explore     The rose-mark on her long-lost child,     I met, I loved you, maiden mild! As whom I long had loved before--     So deeply had I been beguiled.                                 V You stood before me like a thought,     A dream remembered in a dream.     But when those meek eyes first did seem To tell me, Love within you wrought--     O Greta, dear domestic stream!                                 VI Has not, since then, Love's prompture deep,     Has not Love's whisper evermore     Been ceaseless, as thy gentle roar? Sole voice, when other voices sleep,     Dear under-song in clamor's hour. 1807