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| THE LIGHTS and shadows of long ago | |
| In the grand old Forest of Fontainebleau | |
| Go with me still wherever I go. | |
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| I range my pictures around my room, | |
| Won from the forest’s light and gloom; | 5 |
| Not yet shall they sink to an auction’s doom. | |
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| They wake me again to the painter’s moods; | |
| They take me back to the wonderful woods, | |
| The wild, dream-haunted solitudes. | |
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| They come as Memory waves her wand; | 10 |
| And I think of the days when with busy hand | |
| I painted alone in the forest grand. | |
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| I see the old gnarled oak-trees spread | |
| Their boughs and foliage over my head. | |
| About the mossy rocks I tread. | 15 |
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| Under the beeches of Fontainebleau, | |
| In the green dim dells of the Bas-Brëau, | |
| Mid ferns and laurel-tufts I go; | |
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| Or up on the hills, while the woods beneath | |
| Circle me round like a giant-wreath, | 20 |
| Plunge knee-deep in the purple heath; | |
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| Then down to a patch of furzy sand, | |
| Where the white umbrella and easel stand, | |
| And the rocks lie picturesque and grand. | |
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| The mellow autumn with fold on fold | 25 |
| Has dressed the woods with a bronzy gold, | |
| And scarlet scarfs of a wealth untold. | |
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| The tall gray spotted beeches rise | |
| And seem to touch the unclouded skies, | |
| And round their tops with clamorous cries | 30 |
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| The rooks are wheeling to and fro; | |
| And down on the brown leaf-matting below | |
| The lights and the shadows come and go. | |
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| O calm, deep days, when labor moved | |
| With wings of joy to the tasks beloved, | 35 |
| And art its own best guerdon proved! | |
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| For such it was, when long ago | |
| I sat in my leafy studio | |
| In the dear old Forest of Fontainebleau. | |
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