I will not see my Father's groves,
They murmur deeply o'er my head
Of sunless days and broken loves:
Their shade is dim and dark and dead.
There through the length of cool arcades
Where noonday leaves the midnight dews,
Unreal shapes of twilight shades
Along sombre avenues,
To Memory's widowed eyes would spring
In dreamy, drowsy wandering.
I will not seek my Father's hills,
Their hue is fresh and clear and bright,
What time the early sunbeams fills
Their bush-clad depths with lonely light.
Each broken stile, each wavy path,
Each hollowed hawthorn, damp, and black,
Each brook chatters noisy wrath
Among its knotted reeds, bring back
Lone images of varied pain
To this worn mind and fevered brain.
I will not seek my Father's Hall:
There peers the day's unhallowed glare,
The wet moss crusts the parting wall,
The wa**ail wind is reveller there.
Along the weedy, chinky floors
Wild knots of flowering rushes blow
And through the sounding corridors
The sere leaf rustles to and fro:
And O! What Memory might recall,
If once I paced the voiceless Hall!