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| SOMETIMES when fragrant summer dusk comes in with scent of rose and musk | |
| And scatters from their sable husk the stars like yellow grain, | |
| Oh then the ancient longing comes that lures me like a roll of drums | |
| To follow where the cricket strums his banjo in the lane. | |
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| And when the August moon comes up and like a shallow silver cup | 5 |
| Pours out upon the fields and roads her amber-colored beams, | |
| A leafy whisper mounts and calls from out the forest’s moss-grown halls | |
| To leave the city’s somber walls and take the road o’ dreams. | |
| A call that bids me rise and strip, and naked all from toe to lip | |
| To wander where the dewdrops drip from off the silent trees, | 10 |
| And where the hairly spiders spin their nets of silver, fragile-thin, | |
| And out to where the fields begin, like down upon the breeze. | |
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| Into a silver pool to plunge, and like a great trout wheel and lunge | |
| Among the lily bonnets and the stars reflected there; | |
| With face upturned to lie afloat, with moonbeams rippling round my throat, | 15 |
| And from the slimy grasses plait a chaplet for my hair. | |
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| Then, leaping from my rustic bath, to take some winding meadow-path; | |
| Across the fields of aftermath to run with flying feet, | |
| And feel the dewdrop-weighted grass that bends beneath me as I pass, | |
| Where solemn trees in shadowy mass beyond the highway meet. | 20 |
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| And, plunging deep within the woods, among the leaf-hung solitudes | |
| Where scarce one timid star intrudes into the breathless gloom, | |
| Go leaping down some fern-hid way to scare the rabbits in their play, | |
| And see the owl, a phantom gray, drift by on silent plume. | |
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| To fling me down at length and rest upon some damp and mossy nest, | 25 |
| And hear the choir of surpliced frogs strike up a bubbling tune; | |
| And watch, above the dreaming trees, Orion and the Hyades | |
| And all the stars, like golden bees around the lily-moon. . . . . . . . . . | |
| Then who can say if I have gone a-gipsying from dusk till dawn | |
| In company with fay and faun, where firefly-lanterns gleam? | 30 |
| And have I danced on cobwebs thin to Master Locust’s mandolin— | |
| Or have I spent the night in bed, and was it all a dream? | |
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