Gretchen Poem by Alexander Anderson

I sit by the narrow window,
Ere the summer sunlight dies,
And before me the 'Faust' of Goethe,
In its strange, sweet rhythm lies.


And I read till the poet's music
Flashes back to that vanish'd time
When my life had the same wild longing
That frets through his mystic rhyme.


And my heart was full of the yearning
For some wide good to be;
But the rougher being of manhood
Hath still'd that frenzy in me.


But still when I read of Gretchen,
So simple, and pure, and fair,
And her dear love-dream in the garden,
Ere the heart felt the deeper snare:


Then I turn to the past, and a maiden
That came in her gentle might,
And my life at her touch, like the Memnon,
Gave answers of love and delight.


And again I walk in the moonlight,
And again look into her eyes,
And see in their depths, like magic,
The veil of my being rise.


And far in its sunny distance,
Hope rising upon each hope,
As the full-breasted clouds in summer
Shoot up through the azure scope.


But those hopes have faded and darken'd,
From the light that used to be;
And are now like the evening twilight
That is creeping in upon me.


But still, when some master poet,
Who hath felt the same sweet strife,
Stirs up with his full, deep music
The ashes of that old life:


Then I turn to one sweet vision
That is set in the years behind,
As the first bright glimpse of a picture
May lie in a painter's mind:


And again I dream of the maiden—
The whisper and clasp of love,
Her hand in my own, and the moonlight
Falling downward from above.