Felicia Hemans in The New Monthly Magazine Volume 41 1834/To a Distant Scene

For other versions of this work, see Records of Passing Thought. IX. To a Distant Scene.

The New Monthly Magazine, Volume 41, Page 430


IX.
To A Distant Scene.
(A Woody Dingle in North Wales.)

Still are the cowslips from thy bosom springing,
    O far-off grassy dell! And dost thou see,
When southern winds first wake the vernal singing,
    The star-gleam of the wood-anemone?
    Doth the shy ring-dove haunt thee still?—the bee
Hang on thy flowers, as when I breathed farewell
    To their wild blooms?—and round my beechen tree
Still, in rich softness, doth the moss-bank swell?—
Oh, strange illusion, by the fond heart wrought,
    Whose own warm life suffuses Nature's face!
My being's tide of many-coloured thought
    Hath pass'd from thee; and now, green, flowery place,
I paint thee oſt, scarce consciously, a scene
Silent, forsaken, dim—shadow’d by what hath been.