THE BERRIERS.

Down silver precipices drawn

The red-wine cataracts of dawn

Pour soundless torrents wide and far,

Deluging each warm, floating star.

A sound of winds and brooks and wings,

Sweet woodland-fluted carolings,

Star radiance dashed on moss and fern,

Wet leaves that quiver, breathe, and burn;

Wet hills, hung heavily with woods,

Dew-drenched and drunken solitudes

Faint-murmuring elfin canticles;

Sound, light, and spicy boisterous smells,

And flowers and buds; tumultuous bees,

Wind-wafts and genii of the trees.

Thro’ briers that trammel, one by one,

With swinging pails comes laughing on

A troop of youthful berriers,

Their wet feet glitt'ring where they pass

Thro’ dew-drop studded tufts of grass:

And oh! their cheers, their merry cheers,

Wake Echo on her shrubby rock,

Whom dale and mountain answering mock

With rapid fairy horns, as if

Each mossy hill and weedy cliff

Had its imperial Oberon,

Who, seeking his Titania hid

In bloomy coverts him to shun,

In kingly wrath had called and chid.