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Should in strange ways, in her dreams should visit her, strengthen her, shield her?
Is it possible, rather, that these great floods of feeling
Setting-in daily from me towards her should, impotent wholly,
Bring neither sound nor motion to that sweet shore they heave to?
Efflux here, and there no stir nor pulse of influx!
It must reverberate surely, reverberate idly, it may be.
Yea, hath He set us our bounds which we shall not pass, and cannot?
Would I were dead I keep saying that so I could go and uphold her!
Surely, surely, when sleepless I lie in the mountain lamenting,
Surely, surely, she hears in her dreams a voice 'I am with thee,'
Saying, 'although not with thee: behold, for we mated our spirits,
Then, when we stood in the chamber, and knew not the words we were saying;'
Yea, if she felt me within her, when not with one finger I touched her,
Surely she knows it, and feels it, while sorrowing here in the moorland,
Would I were dead, I keep saying, that so I could go and uphold her!
Spirits with spirits commingle and separate; lightly as winds do,
Spice-laden South with the ocean-born Zephyr; they mingle and sunder;
No sad remorses for them, no visions of horror and vileness;
Elements fuse and resolve, as affinity draws and repels them;
We, if we touch, must remain, if attracted, cohere to the ending,
Guilty we are if we do not, and yet if we would we could not:
Would I were dead I keep saying, that so I could go and uphold her.
Surely the force that here sweeps me along in its violent impulse,
Surely my strength shall be in her, my help and protection about her,
Surely in inner-sweet gladness and vigour of joy shall sustain her,
Till, the brief winter o'er-past, her own true sap in the springtide
Rise, and the tree I have bared he verdurous e'en as aforetime:
Surely it may be, it should be, it must be. Yet ever and ever,
Would I were dead, I keep saying, that so I could go and uphold her!
No wherever be Katie, with Philip she is not: behold, for
Here he is sitting alone, and these are his words in the mountain.
And, at the farm on the lochside of Rannoch in parlour and kitchen
Hark! there is music—yea, flowing of music, of milk, and of whiskey,
Dancing and drinking, the young and the old, the spectators and actors,
Never not actors the young, and the old not alway spectators:
Lo, I see piping and dancing! and whom in the midst of the battle
Cantering loudly along there, or look you, with arms uplifted
Whistling, and snapping his fingers, and seizing his gay-smiling Janet,
Whom?-whom else but the Piper? the wary precognizant Piper,
Who, for the love of gay Janet, and mindful of old invitation,
