And bore me back
Along her rose-and-starry tinted track,
And showed me how the full-winged day emerged
From out the black.
She knew the speech
Of all the deep-pink blossoms of the peach,
Told in my ear the meanings of the trees,
The thoughts of each;
Explained to me
The language of the bird and frog and bee,
The messages the streams and rivers take
Unto the sea.
Alas! Alas!
I have forgot. The dream did from me pass.
I know not e’en the meaning dear and sweet
Of common grass.
And now when I
Roam this strange earth beneath a stranger sky,
Soft syllables of that forgotten speech
Faint as a sigh,
Come back again,
With sweet solicitings that urge like pain,
And brood like love—as full of light and dark
As April rain.
In the Crowd
HERE in the crowded city’s busy street,
Swayed by the eager, jostling, hasting throng,
Where Traffic’s voice grows harsher and more strong,
I see within the stream of hurrying feet
A company of trees in their retreat,
Dew-bathed, dream-wrapped, and with a thrush’s song
Emparadising all the place, along
Whose paths I hear the pulse of Beauty beat.
’Twas yesterday I walked beneath the trees,
To-day I tread the city’s stony ways;
And still the spell that o’er my spirit came
Turns harshest sounds to shy bird ecstasies,
Pours scent of pine through murky chimney haze,
And gives each careworn face a woodland frame.