The sight that throbs and aches beneath my touch,
As tho' there beat a heart in either eye;
For when the outer lights are darken'd thus,
The memory's vision hath a keener edge.
It grows upon me now--the semicircle
Of dark blue waters and the narrow fringe
Of curving beach--its wreaths of dripping green--
Its pale pink shells--the summer-house aloft
That open'd on the pines with doors of glass,
A mountain nest the pleasure boat that rock'd
Light-green with its own shadow, keel to keel,
Upon the crispings of the dappled waves
That blanched upon its side.
O Love, O Hope,
They come, they crowd upon me all at once,
Moved from the cloud of unforgotten things,
That sometimes on the horizon of the mind
Lies folded--often sweeps athwart in storm--
They flash across the darkness of my brain,
The many pleasant days, the moolit nights,
The dewy dawnings and the amber eyes,
When thou and I, Camilla, thou and I
Were borne about the bay, or safely moor'd
Beneath some low brow'd cavern, where the wave
Plash'd sapping its worn ribs (the while without,
And close above us, sang the wind-tost pine,
And shook its earthly socket, for we heard,
In rising and in falling with the tide,
Close by our ears, the huge roots strain and creak),
Eye feeding upon eye with deep intent;