Home Pastorals, Ballads and Lyrics/From the North

by Bayard Taylor

FROM THE NORTH.

 

Once more without you! Sighing, Dear, once more,
For all the sweet, accustomed ministries
Of wife and mother: not as when the seas
That parted us my tender message bore
From the gray olives of the Cretan shore
To those that hide the broken Phidian frieze
Of our Athenian home,—but far degrees,
Wide plains, great forests, part us now. My door
Looks on the rushing Neva, cold and clear:
The swelling domes in hovering splendor lie
Like golden bubbles, eager to be gone;
But the chill crystal of the atmosphere
Withholds them, and along the northern sky
The amber midnight smiles in dreams of dawn.