I
Around me sounded effort manifold,
As creaking cranes swung ponderously slow,
At intervals I heard the hiss of steam,
The rhythmic beating of an iron's blow:
I thought,—this energy will sometime be
Transmuted into that which all men crave,
The magic metal, Gold, great Titan Gold,
Whom men make monarch when he should be slave.
And as I mused, above the jarring clang,
I heard a faint sweet sound of flutterings,
A tender movement, musical and low,
As of a fledgeling trying its young wings.
A gentle zephyr blew the casement wide,
A woman glided past the tapestry,
With russet golden hair, all gowned in gold.
She looked about her hesitatingly;
I heard her voice as if thro' beechen boughs,
Caressive as a moor-born singing burn,
And thro' it ran the lisping of the pines,
The lovely lilt of some gold-dying fern.