FOREST AND FIELD

Green, watery jets of light let through

The rippling foliage drenched with dew;

And golden glimmers, warm and dim,

That in the vistaed distance swim;

Where,‘ round the wood-spring's oozy urn,

The limp, loose fronds of forest fern

Trail like the tresses, green and wet,

A wood-nymph binds with violet.

O'er rocks that bulge and roots that knot

The emerald-amber mosses clot;

From matted walls of brier and brush

The elder nods its plumes of plush;

And, Argus-eyed with many a bloom,

The wild-rose breathes its wild perfume;

May-apples, ripening yellow, lean

With oblong fruit, a lemon-green,

Near Indian-turnips, long of stem,

That bear an acorn-oval gem,

As if some woodland Bacchus there,—

While braiding locks of hyacinth hair

With ivy-tod,— had idly tost

His thyrsus down and so had lost:

And blood-root, that from scarlet wombs

Puts forth, in spring, its milk-white blooms,

That then like starry footsteps shine

Of April under beech and pine;

At which the gnarled eyes of trees

Stare, big as Fauns’ at Dryades,

That bend above a fountain's spar

As white and naked as a star.

The stagnant stream flows sleepily

Thick with its lily-pads; the bee,—

All honey-drunk, a Bassarid,—

Booms past the mottled toad, that, hid

In calamus-plants and blue-eyed grass,

Beside the water's pooling glass,

Silenus-like, eyes stolidly

The Maenad-glittering dragonfly.

And pennyroyal and peppermint

Pour dry-hot odours without stint

From fields and banks of many streams;

And in their scent one almost seems

To see Demeter pass, her breath

Sweet with her triumph over death.—

A haze of floating saffron; sound

Of shy, crisp creepings o'er the ground;

The dip and stir of twig and leaf;

Tempestuous gusts of spices brief

Borne over bosks of sassafras

By winds that foot it on the grass;

Sharp, sudden songs and whisperings,

That hint at untold hidden things —

Pan and Sylvanus who of old

Kept sacred each wild wood and wold.

A wily light beneath the trees

Quivers and dusks with every breeze —

A Hamadryad, haply, who,—

Culling her morning meal of dew

From frail, accustomed cups of flowers,—

Now sees some Satyr in the bowers,

Or hears his goat-hoof snapping press

Some brittle branch, and in distress

Shrinks back; her dark, dishevelled hair

Veiling her limbs one instant there.