Home Pastorals, Ballads and Lyrics/From the North
FROM THE NORTH.
Once more without you! Sighing, Dear, once more,For all the sweet, accustomed ministriesOf wife and mother: not as when the seasThat parted us my tender message boreFrom the gray olives of the Cretan shoreTo those that hide the broken Phidian friezeOf our Athenian home,—but far degrees,Wide plains, great forests, part us now. My doorLooks on the rushing Neva, cold and clear:The swelling domes in hovering splendor lieLike golden bubbles, eager to be gone;But the chill crystal of the atmosphereWithholds them, and along the northern skyThe amber midnight smiles in dreams of dawn.