I

I KNELT down as I poured my spirit forth by that grey gate,
In fulness of my gratitude and with a joy sedate;
I stood on that wild heath alone, and offered up apart
The frankincense of love that, fountain-like, gushed from my heart.

II

And while I breathed that orison, and felt a holy glow
Pervade my inmost being with its calm and equal flow;
While the sun shone within me, and the air elastic played,
And to and fro the wheat-field like the wavy ocean swayed;

III

And while the black firs tossed their arms against the joyous blue,
Light glinting on the grassy sward as broken rays flashed through,
I felt that Nature's self responded to me from her throne,
And echoed back the rapture of my bosom from her own.

IV

Red autumn leaves with gorgeous hues the rich ground tinted o'er,
As if they led through vistaing paths to some far golden shore;
And while the wind sighed o'er them like a note of grief suppressed,
My heart poured forth its blessing on the loveliness it blessed.

V

For there I stood on sacred ground that hallowed was by me,
To boyhood's years, now dimmed and faded on the verge of memory:
Sacred to me the grey-haired man who drank God's blessed air,
Though half a life had rolled away since last I entered there.

VI

The oak drooped o'er that gate, a withered thing in dead repose,
The village spire above the waste a sheeted spectre rose;
And Mendip's bleak and barren heights again enclosed me round,
Like faces of forgotten friends met on forgotten ground.

VII

But heath and landscape, boundless once, were shrunken, all was changed;
I felt I stood a stranger there, the place from me estranged;
Each glance was memory renewed, and with a welcome sense
Of gratitude's fine ecstasy, calm, voiceless, but intense.