where first The landscape on your vision burst, Were not always dead, and now Shadows rest upon the brow Of the souls as young as you. Some are gone, though years are few Since you roamed with them the hills. So the landscape changes, wills All the changes, did it try Its promises to justify?...  

  

  

      For you return and find it bare:      There is no heaven of golden air. Your eyes around the horizon rove, A clump of trees is Leese's Grove. And what's the hedgerow, what's the pond?      A wallow where the vagabond Beast will not drink, and where the arch Of heaven in the days of March Refrains to look. A blinding rain Beats the once gilded window pane. John, the poor wretch, is gone, but bread Tempts other feet that path to tread Between the barn and house, and brave The March rain and the winds that rave. ... O, landscape I am one who stands Returned with pale and broken hands Glad for the day that I have known, And finds the deserted doorway strown With shoulder blade and spinal bone. And you who nourished me and bred I find the spirit from you fled. You gave me dreams,'twas at your breast      My soul's beginning rose and pressed My steps afar at last and shaped A world elusive, which escaped Whatever love or thought could find Beyond the tireless wings of mind. Yet grown by you, and feeding on Your strength as mother, you are gone When I return from living, trace My steps to see how I began, And deeply search your mother face To know your inner self, the place For which you bore me, sent me forth To wander, south or east or north. ... Now the familiar landscape lies With breathless breast and hollow eyes. It knows me not, as I know not Its secret, spirit, all forgot Its kindred look is, as I stand A stranger in an unknown land.  

  

  

      Are we not earth-born, formed of dust Which seeks again its love and trust In an old landscape, after change In hearts grown weary, wrecked and strange? What though we struggled to emerge Dividual, footed for the urge Of further self-discoveries, though In the mid-years we cease to know, Through disenchanted eyes, the spell That clothed it like a miracle—      Yet at the last our steps return Its deeper mysteries to learn. It has been always 

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