IN THE WOOD

The waterfall, deep in the wood,

Talked drowsily with solitude,

A soft, insistent sound of foam,

That filled with sleep the forest's dome,

Where, like some dream of dusk, she stood

Accentuating solitude.

The crickets’ tinkling chips of sound

Strewed dim the twilight-twinkling ground;

A whippoorwill began to cry,

And glimmering through the sober sky

A bat went on its drunken round,

Its shadow following on the ground.

Then from a bush, an elder-copse,

That spiced the dark with musky tops,

What seemed, at first, a shadow came

And took her hand and spoke her name,

And kissed her where, in starry drops,

The dew orbed on the elder-tops.

The glaucous glow of fireflies

Flickered the dusk; and foxlike eyes

Peered from the shadows; and the hush

Murmured a word of wind and rush

Of fluttering waters, fragrant sighs,

And dreams unseen of mortal eyes.

The beetle flung its burr of sound

Against the hush and clung there, wound

In night's deep mane: then, in a tree,

A grig began deliberately

To file the stillness: all around

A wire of shrillness seemed unwound.

I looked for those two lovers there;

His ardent eyes, her passionate hair.

The moon looked down, slow-climbing wan

Heaven's slope of azure: they were gone:

But where they'd passed I heard the air

Sigh, faint with sweetness of her hair.