An Interlude.
Between the hills, alone upon the heath,1
Our farmhouse stands; for miles and miles around2
Is naught but silence : and the mystic hills3
Bend over us, where gazing from beneath4
Our house looks up : never a harsher sound5
Than the far ocean’s moan the silence fills.6
The rooks caw in the tree-tops in the spring,7
And round the place few birds are heard to sing.8
Once on a time the silence of the place9
Was broken for a while. He came that way10
In search for health, and quiet, peace, and rest.11
He read or painted, once he drew my face,12
See where it hangs ! ’twas how I looked the day13
When his love-whispers echoed through my breast.14
Not much like me ? No, not like I am now,15
But it was I, e’er sorrow lined my brow.16
We wandered up and down the stretching plain,17
And climbed the hills, and gazed up to the stars ;18
Then questioned their existence and our own,19
Talked o’er and o’er the mysteries of pain20
And tried to peer through Heaven’s heavy bars.21
Yet, e’er the seeds sprang up that he had sown22
Beneath my window, he had gone, and I23
Wondered, alone, if it were hard to die,24
Yet he had only whispered me of love,25
And so the silence faded when his voice26
Broke on mine ear in those first days of life.27
But now it fills the place ; and from above28
The hills look down, and silence doth rejoice29
To hide me from my self’s most weary strife.30
Ah ! well I know, that silence will not break31
Till I lie down and sleep—no more to wake.32