Her shawl, the lace-like elder bloom,
She hangs upon the hillside brake,
Smelling of warmth and of her breast's perfume,
And, lying in the citron-colored gloom
Beside the lilied lake,
She stares the buds awake.
Or, with a smile, through watery deeps
She leads the oaring turtle's legs;
Or guides the crimson fish, that swims and sleeps,
From pad to pad, from which the young frog leaps;
And to its nest's green eggs
The bird that pleads and begs.
Then 'mid the fields of unmown hay
She shows the bees where sweets are found;
And points the butterflies, at airy play,
And dragonflies, along the water-way,
Where honeyed flowers abound
For them to flicker 'round.
Or where ripe apples pelt with gold
Some barn—around which, coned with snow,
The wild-potato blooms—she mounts its old
Mossed roof, and through warped sides, the knots have holed,
Lets her long glances glow
Into the loft below.
To show the mud-wasp at its cell
Slenderly busy; swallows, too,
Packing against a beam their nest's clay shell;
And crouching in the dark the owl as well
With all her downy crew
Of owlets gray of hue.
These are her joys, and until dusk
Lounging she walks where reapers reap,
From sultry raiment shaking scents of musk,
Rustling the corn within its silken husk,
And driving down heav'n's deep
White herds of clouds like sheep.