O MAYTIME WOODS!

O Maytime woods! O Maytime lanes and hours!

And stars, that knew how often there at night

Beside the path, where woodbine odors blew

Between the drowsy eyelids of the dusk,—

When, like a great, white, pearly moth, the moon

Hung silvering long windows of your room,—

I stood among the shrubs! The dark house slept.

I watched and waited for — I know not what!—

Some tremor of your gown: a velvet leaf's

Unfolding to caresses of the Spring:

The rustle of your footsteps: or the dew

Syllabling avowal on a tulip's lips

Of odorous scarlet: or the whispered word

Of something lovelier than new leaf or rose —

The word young lips half murmur in a dream:

Serene with sleep, light visions weigh her eyes:

And underneath her window blooms a quince.

The night is a sultana who doth rise

In slippered caution, to admit a prince,

Love, who her eunuchs and her lord defies.

Are these her dreams? or is it that the breeze

Pelts me with petals of the quince, and lifts

The Balm-o’ - Gilead buds? and seems to squeeze

Aroma on aroma through sweet rifts

Of Eden, dripping through the rainy trees.

Along the path the buckeye trees begin

To heap their hills of blossoms.— Oh, that they

Were Romeo ladders, whereby I might win

Her chamber's sanctity!— where dreams must pray

About her soul!— That I might enter in!—

A dream,— and see the balsam scent erase

Its dim intrusion; and the starry night

Conclude majestic pomp; the virgin grace

Of every bud abashed before the white,

Pure passion-flower of her sleeping face.