Song at Parting / Francis Sherman

Song at Parting

And after many days (for I shall keep
    These old things unforgotten, nevertheless!)
    My lids at last, feeling thy faint caress,
Shall open, April, to the wooded sweep
Of Northern hills; and my slow blood shall leap
    And surge, for joy and very wantonness —
    Like Northern waters when thy feet possess
The valleys, and the green year wakes from sleep.

That morn the drowsy South, as we go forth
    (Unseen thy hand in mine; I, seen of all)
        Will marvel that I seek the outmost quay,—
The while, gray leagues away, a new-born North
    Harkens with wonder to thy rapturous call
        For some old lover down across the sea.

~~
Francis Sherman (1871-1926)
from Two Songs at Parting, 1899

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Francis Sherman biography

J.M.W. Turner (1785-1851), The Parting of Hero and Leander. Wikimedia Commons.