The Piper

I will not lift the door-latch, I will not step in
From the dark fields and the starlight and the bent and whin:
All about the stone gables, in the dusk alone
You shall hear my pipe playing by your own hearth-stone.

I have no joy of your banquets nor your lighted halls:
I flute not for your dancing at gay routs and balls.
When the last guest has departed, and the lights have died,
Come I with my shrill piping up the lone hillside.

I bring no sheaf of ballads of wars and dead wrongs:
All across the wide world God has taught me my songs, —
Old tunes and unwritten, wrought in far years,
In a strange tongue and tender, with a burden of tears.

O hearts that are restless, O hearts that repine,
Knowledge; of all sorrows and of all dreams is mire.
With a song of dim longing and of lost delight
I will catch at your heart-strings in the dark of the night.