| |
| THE GROUND I walk’d on felt like air, | |
| Air buoyant with the year’s young mirth; | |
| Far, filmy, undulating fair, | |
| The down lay, a long wave of earth; | |
| And a still green foam of woods rose high | 5 |
| Over the hill-line into the sky. | |
| In meadowy pasture browse the kine, | |
| Thin wheat-blades color a brown ploughline; | |
| Fresh rapture of the year’s young joy | |
| Was in the unfolded luminous leaf, | 10 |
| And birds that shower as they toy | |
| Melodious rain that knows not grief, | |
| A song-maze where my heart in bliss | |
| Lay folded, like a chrysalis. | |
| They allur’d my feet far into the wood, | 15 |
| Down a winding glade with leaflets wall’d, | |
| With an odorous dewy dark imbued; | |
| Rose, and maple, and hazel call’d | |
| Me into the shadowy solitude; | |
| Wild blue germander eyes enthrall’d | 20 |
| Made me free of the balmy bowers, | |
| Where a wonderful garden-party of flowers, | |
| Laughing sisterhood under the trees, | |
| Dancing merrily, play’d with the bees; | |
| Anemone, starwort, bands in white, | 25 |
| Like girls for a first communion dight, | |
| And pale yellow primrose ere her flight, | |
| Usher’d me onward wondering | |
| To a scene more fair than the court of a king. | |
| Ah! they were very fair themselves, | 30 |
| Sweet maids of honor, woodland elves! | |
| Frail flowers that arrive with the cuckoo, | |
| Pale lilac, hyacinth purple of hue, | |
| And the little pink geranium, | |
| All smil’d and nodded to see me come; | 35 |
| All gave me welcome; “No noise,” they said, | |
| “For we will show you the bridal bed, | |
| Where Philomel, our queen, was wed; | |
| Hush! move with a tender, reverent foot, | |
| Like a shy light over bole and root;” | 40 |
| And they blew in the delicate air for flute. | |
| |
| Into the heart of the verdure stole | |
| My feet, and a music enwound my soul; | |
| Zephyr flew over a cool bare brow— | |
| I am near, very near to the secret now! | 45 |
| For the rose-covers, all alive with song, | |
| Flash with it, plain now low and long; | |
| Sprinkle a holy water of notes; | |
| On clear air melody leans and floats; | |
| The blithewing’d minstrel merrily moves, | 50 |
| Dim bushes burn with mystical loves! | |
| |
| Lo! I arrive! immers’d in green, | |
| Where the wood divides, though barely seen, | |
| A nest in one of the blue leaf-rifts! | |
| There over the border a bird uplifts | 55 |
| Her downy head, bill’d, luminousey’d; | |
| Behold the chosen one, the bride! | |
| And the singer, he singeth by her side. | |
| Leap, heart! be aflame with them! loud, not dumb, | |
| Give a voice to their epithalamium! | 60 |
| Whose raptures wax not pale nor dim | |
| Beside the fires of seraphim. | |
| These are glorious, glowing stairs, | |
| In gradual ascent to theirs; | |
| With human loves acclaim and hail | 65 |
| The holy lore of the nightingale! | |
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