<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=118351" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Songs in Absence</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Farewell, farewell! Her vans the vessel tries,<br>His iron might the potent engine plies:<br>Haste, winged words, and ere ’tis useless, tell,<br>Farewell, farewell, yet once again, farewell.<br>The docks, the streets, the houses past us fly,<br>Without a strain the great ship marches by;<br>Ye fleeting banks take up the words we tell,<br>And say for us yet once again, farewell.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The waters widen—on without a strain<br>The strong ship moves upon the open main;<br>She knows the seas, she hears the true waves swell,<br>She seems to say farewell, again farewell.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The billows whiten and the deep seas heave;<br>Fly once again, sweet words, to her I leave,<br>With winds that blow return, and seas that swell,<br>Farewell, farewell, say once again, farewell.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Fresh in my face and rippling to my feet<br>The winds and waves an answer soft repeat,<br>In sweet, sweet words far brought they seem to tell,<br>Farewell, farewell, yet once again, farewell.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Night gathers fast; adieu, thou fading shore!<br>The land we look for next must lie before;<br>Hence, foolish tears! weak thoughts, no more rebel,<br>Farewell, farewell, a last, a last farewell.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet not, indeed, ah not till more than sea<br>And more than space divide my love and me,<br>Till more than waves and winds between us swell,<br>Farewell, a last, indeed, a last farewell.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ye flags of Piccadilly,<br>Where I posted up and down,<br>And wished myself so often<br>Well away from you and town,—<br>Are the people walking quietly<br>And steady on their feet,<br>Cabs and omnibuses plying<br>Just as usual in the street?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Do the houses look as upright<br>As of old they used to be,<br>And does nothing seem affected<br>By the pitching of the sea?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Through the Green Park iron railings<br>Do the quick pedestrians pass?<br>Are the little children playing<br>Round the plane-tree in the grass?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">This squally wild north-wester<br>With which our vessel fights,<br>Does it merely serve with you to<br>Carry up some paper kites?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ye flags of Piccadilly,<br>Which I hated so, I vow<br>I could wish with all my heart<br>You were underneath me now!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Come home, come home! and where is home for me,<br>Whose ship is driving o’er the trackless sea?<br>To the frail bark here plunging on its way,<br>To the wild waters, shall I turn and say<br>To the plunging bark, or to the salt sea foam,<br>You are my home.<br>Fields once I walked in, faces once I knew,<br>Familiar things so old my heart believed them true,<br>These far, far back, behind me lie, before<br>The dark clouds mutter, and the deep seas roar,<br>And speak to them that ’neath and o’er them roam<br>No words of home.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Beyond the clouds, beyond the waves that roar,<br>There may indeed, or may not be, a shore,<br>Where fields as green, and hands and hearts as true,<br>The old forgotten semblance may renew,<br>And offer exiles driven far o’er the salt sea foam<br>Another home.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But toil and pain must wear out many a day,<br>And days bear weeks, and weeks bear months away,<br>Ere, if at all, the weary traveller hear,<br>With accents whispered in his wayworn ear,<br>A voice he dares to listen to, say, Come<br>To thy true home.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Come home, come home! and where a home hath he<br>Whose ship is driving o’er the driving sea?<br>Through clouds that mutter, and o’er waves that roar,<br>Say, shall we find, or shall we not, a shore<br>That is, as is not ship or ocean foam,<br>Indeed our home?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Green fields of England! wheresoe’er<br>Across this watery waste we fare,<br>Your image at our hearts we bear<br>Green fields of England, everywhere.<br>Sweet eyes in England, I must flee<br>Past where the waves’ last confines be,<br>Ere your loved smile I cease to see,<br>Sweet eyes in England, dear to me.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Dear home in England, safe and fast<br>If but in thee my lot lie cast,<br>The past shall seem a nothing past<br>To thee, dear home, if won at last;<br>Dear home in England, won at last.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Come back, come back, behold with straining mast<br>And swelling sail, behold her steaming fast;<br>With one new sun to see her voyage o’er,<br>With morning light to touch her native shore.<br>Come back, come back.<br>Come back, come back, while westward labouring by,<br>With sailless yards, a bare black hulk we fly.<br>See how the gale we fight with sweeps her back,<br>To our lost home, on our forsaken track.<br>Come back, come back.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Come back, come back, across the flying foam,<br>We hear faint far-off voices call us home,<br>Come back, ye seem to say; ye seek in vain;<br>We went, we sought, and homeward turned again.<br>Come back, come back.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Come back, come back; and whither back or why?<br>To fan quenched hopes, forsaken schemes to try;<br>Walk the old fields; pace the familiar street;<br>Dream with the idlers, with the bards compete.<br>Come back, come back.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Come back, come back; and whither and for what?<br>To finger idly some old Gordian knot,<br>Unskilled to sunder, and too weak to cleave,<br>And with much toil attain to half-believe.<br>Come back, come back.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Come back, come back; yea back, indeed, do go<br>Sighs panting thick, and tears that want to flow;<br>Fond fluttering hopes upraise their useless wings,<br>And wishes idly struggle in the strings;<br>Come back, come back.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Come back, come back, more eager than the breeze,<br>The flying fancies sweep across the seas,<br>And lighter far than ocean’s flying foam,<br>The heart’s fond message hurries to its home.<br>Come back, come back</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Come back, come back!<br>Back flies the foam; the hoisted flag streams back;<br>The long smoke wavers on the homeward track,<br>Back fly with winds things which the winds obey,<br>The strong ship follows its appointed way.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Some future day when what is now is not,<br>When all old faults and follies are forgot,<br>And thoughts of difference passed like dreams away,<br>We’ll meet again, upon some future day.<br>When all that hindered, all that vexed our love,<br>As tall rank weeds will climb the blade above,<br>When all but it has yielded to decay,<br>We’ll meet again upon some future day.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">When we have proved, each on his course alone,<br>The wider world, and learnt what’s now unknown,<br>Have made life clear, and worked out each a way,<br>We’ll meet again,—we shall have much to say.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">With happier mood, and feelings born anew,<br>Our boyhood’s bygone fancies we’ll review,<br>Talk o’er old talks, play as we used to play,<br>And meet again, on many a future day.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Some day, which oft our hearts shall yearn to see,<br>In some far year, though distant yet to be,<br>Shall we indeed,—ye winds and waters, say!—<br>Meet yet again, upon some future day?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Where lies the land to which the ship would go?<br>Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know.<br>And where the land she travels from? Away,<br>Far, far behind, is all that they can say.<br>On sunny noons upon the deck’s smooth face,<br>Linked arm in arm, how pleasant here to pace;<br>Or, o’er the stern reclining, watch below<br>The foaming wake far widening as we go.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">On stormy nights when wild north-westers rave,<br>How proud a thing to fight with wind and wave!<br>The dripping sailor on the reeling mast<br>Exults to bear, and scorns to wish it past.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Where lies the land to which the ship would go?<br>Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know.<br>And where the land she travels from? Away,<br>Far, far behind, is all that they can say.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The mighty ocean rolls and raves,<br>To part us with its angry waves;<br>But arch on arch from shore to shore,<br>In a vast fabric reaching o’er,<br>With careful labours daily wrought<br>By steady hope and tender thought,<br>The wide and weltering waste above—<br>Our hearts have bridged it with their love.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">There fond anticipations fly<br>To rear the growing structure high;<br>Dear memories upon either side<br>Combine to make it large and wide.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">There, happy fancies day by day,<br>New courses sedulously lay;<br>There soft solicitudes, sweet fears,<br>And doubts accumulate, and tears.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">While the pure purpose of the soul,<br>To form of many parts a whole,<br>To make them strong and hold them true,<br>From end to end, is carried through.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then when the waters war between,<br>Upon the masonry unseen,<br>Secure and swift, from shore to shore,<br>With silent footfall travelling o’er,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Our sundered spirits come and go.<br>Hither and thither, to and fro,<br>Pass and repass, now linger near,<br>Now part, anew to reappear.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">With motions of a glad surprise,<br>We meet each other’s wondering eyes,<br>At work, at play, when people talk,<br>And when we sleep, and when we walk.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Each dawning day my eyelids see<br>You come, methinks, across to me,<br>And I, at every hour anew<br>Could dream I travelled o’er to you.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">That out of sight is out of mind<br>Is true of most we leave behind;<br>It is not sure, nor can be true,<br>My own and only love, of you.<br>They were my friends, ’twas sad to part;<br>Almost a tear began to start;<br>But yet as things run on they find<br>That out of sight is out of mind.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For men, that will not idlers be,<br>Must lend their hearts to things they see;<br>And friends who leave them far behind,<br>When out of sight are out of mind.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I blame it not; I think that when<br>The cold and silent meet again,<br>Kind hearts will yet as erst be kind,<br>’Twas ‘out of sight,’ was ‘out of mind.’</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I knew it when we parted, well,<br>I knew it, but was loth to tell;<br>I felt before, what now I find,<br>That ‘out of sight’ is ‘out of mind.’</div><div style="margin:10px 0">That friends, however friends they were,<br>Still deal with things as things occur,<br>And that, excepting for the blind,<br>What’s out of sight is out of mind.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But love, the poets say, is blind;<br>So out of sight and out of mind<br>Need not, nor will, I think, be true,<br>My own and only love, of you.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Were you with me, or I with you,<br>There’s nought, methinks, I might not do;<br>Could venture here, and venture there,<br>And never fear, nor ever care.<br>To things before, and things behind,<br>Could turn my thoughts, and turn my mind,<br>On this and that, day after day,<br>Could dare to throw myself away.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Secure, when all was o’er, to find<br>My proper thought, my perfect mind,<br>And unimpaired receive anew<br>My own and better self in you.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Am I with you, or you with me?<br>Or in some blessed place above,<br>Where neither lands divide nor sea,<br>Are we united in our love?<br>Oft while in longing here I lie,<br>That wasting ever still endures;<br>My soul out from me seems to fly,<br>And half-way, somewhere, meet with yours.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Somewhere—but where I cannot guess—<br>Beyond, may be, the bound of space,<br>The liberated spirits press<br>And meet, bless heaven, and embrace.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It seems not either here nor there,<br>Somewhere between us up above,<br>A region of a clearer air,<br>The dwelling of a purer love.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Were I with you, or you with me,<br>My love, how happy should we be;<br>Day after day it is sad cheer<br>To have you there, while I am here.<br>My darling’s face I cannot see,<br>My darling’s voice is mute for me,<br>My fingers vainly seek the hair<br>Of her that is not here, but there.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In a strange land, to her unknown,<br>I sit and think of her alone;<br>And in that happy chamber where<br>We sat, she sits, nor has me there.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet still the happy thought recurs<br>That she is mine, as I am hers,<br>That she is there, as I am here,<br>And loves me, whether far or near.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The mere assurance that she lives<br>And loves me, full contentment gives;<br>I need not doubt, despond, or fear,<br>For, she is there, and I am here.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Were you with me, or I with you,<br>There’s nought methinks I could not do;<br>And nothing that, for your dear sake,<br>I might not dare to undertake.<br>With thousands standing by as fit,<br>More keen, perhaps more needing it,<br>To be the first some job to spy,<br>And jump and call out, Here am I!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O for one’s miserable self<br>To ask a pittance of the pelf,<br>To claim, however small, a share,<br>Which other men might think so fair:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It was not worth it! a first time<br>A thought upon it seemed a crime;<br>To stoop and pick the dirty pence,<br>A taint upon one’s innocence.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">My own! with nothing sordid, base,<br>Or mean, we would our love disgrace;<br>Yet something I methinks could do,<br>Were you with me, or I with you:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Some misconstruction would sustain;<br>Count some humiliation gain;<br>Make unabashed a righteous claim,<br>And profess merit without shame:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Apply for service; day by day<br>Seek honest work for honest pay,<br>Without a fear by any toil<br>The over-cleanly hand to soil:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Secure in safety to return,<br>And every pettiness unlearn;<br>And unimpaired still find anew<br>My own and better self in you.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O ship, ship, ship,<br>That travellest over the sea,<br>What are the tidings, I pray thee,<br>Thou bearest hither to me?<br>Are they tidings of comfort and joy,<br>That shall make me seem to see<br>The sweet lips softly moving<br>And whispering love to me?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Or are they of trouble and grief,<br>Estrangement, sorrow, and doubt,<br>To turn into torture my hopes,<br>And drive me from Paradise out?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O ship, ship, ship,<br>That comest over the sea,<br>Whatever it be thou bringest,<br>Come quickly with it to me.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Arthur+Hugh+Clough">Arthur Hugh Clough</a> from <i>Mari Magno or Tales on Board</i><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=118351" data-title="Songs in Absence de Arthur Hugh Clough" data-description="Farewell, farewell! Her vans the vessel tries,/His iron might the potent engine plies:/Haste, winged words, and ere ’tis useless, tell,/Farewell, farewell, yet once again, farewell./The docks, the streets, the houses past us fly,/Without a strai..."></div> </div> </div>

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