"O brook, running down your mossy way,
I hear only your voice
And the murmuring fir-trees;
Where are your children?
Where are the magic stones, your children?"
The brook answered me sweetly,
"I left them on the Alp,
In steep fields.
They were trying to hold me back,
To keep me from this shady path of happiness;
But I went onward day by day
Until they got used to seeing me pass.
Now, they stand there in an enchantment
On the mountain-side,
While I travel fields of elm and poplar."
BIRD OF PARADISE
I was walking in a meadow of Paradise
When I heard a singing
Far away and sweet
Like a Roman harp,
Sweet and murmurous
Like the wind,
Far and soft
Like the fir trees.
It will not change a song
If the bird has a golden crest;
No feathers of blue and rose-red
Could make a song.
I have known in my dreaming
A gray bird that sang
While all the fields listened!
The Bird of Paradise is like flowers of many trees
Blooming on one:
I saw him in the meadow,
But it was the gray bird I heard singing
Beyond and far.
SHINY BROOK
Oh, shiny brook,
I watch you on your way to the sea,
And see little faces peering up
Out of the water . . .
Water-fairies
Strange smiles and questions.
They are your pebbles sweet,
Golden with foam of the sun,
Blue with foam of the sky.
I know their way of speaking,
Of talking to each other:
I hear them telling secrets
About green moss, about fish that get lost.
And how I am sitting on a big stone
Getting my feet wet in Shiny Brook
To watch their surprising ways!
HILLS
The hills are going somewhere;
They have been on the way a long time.
They are like camels in a line
But they move more slowly.
Sometimes at sunset they carry silks,
But most of the time silver birch trees,
Heavy rocks, heavy trees, gold leaves
On heavy branches till they are aching . . .
Birches like silver bars they can hardly lift
With grass so thick about their feet to hinder . . .
They have not gone far
In the time I've watched them . . .