THE SPRING.

Push back the brambles, berry-blue,

The hollowed spring is full in view;

Deep tangled with luxuriant fern

Its rock-imbedded crystal urn.

Not for the loneliness that keeps

The coigne wherein its silence sleeps;

Not for wild butterflies that sway

Their pansy pinions all the day

Above its mirror; nor the bee,

Nor dragon-fly which passing see

Themselves reflected in its spar;

Not for the one white, liquid star

That twinkles in its firmament,

Nor moon-shot clouds so slowly sent

Athwart it when the kindly night

Beads all its grasses with the light,

Small jewels of the dimpled dew;

Not for the day's reflected blue,

Nor the quaint, dainty colored stones

That dance within it where it moans;

Not for all these I love to sit

In silence and to gaze in it.

But, know, a nymph with merry eyes

Meets mine within its laughing skies;

A graceful, naked nymph who plays

All the long fragrant summer days

With instant sight of bees and birds,

And speaks with them in water-words.

One for whose nakedness the air

Weaves moony mists, and on whose hair,

Unfilleted, the night will set

That lone star as a coronet.