He speaks, rowing.
See, sweetheart, how the lilies lay
Their lambent leaves about our way;
Or, pollen-dusty, nod and float
Their moon-like flowers around our boat.—
The middle of the stream we've reached
Three strokes from where our boat was beached.
Look up. You scarce can see the sky,
Through trees that lean, dark, deep, and high;
And coiled with grape and trailing vine
Build a vast roof of shade and shine;
A house of leaves, where shadows walk,
And whispering winds and waters talk.
There is no path. The saplings choke
The trunks they spring from. There an oak
Lies rotting; and that sycamore,
Which lays its bulk from shore to shore,—
Uprooted by the floods,—perchance,
May be the bridge to some romance.
Now opening through a willow fringe
The waters creep, one tawny tinge
Of sunset; and on either marge
The cottonwoods make walls of shade;
And, near, the gradual hills loom large
Within its mirror. Herons wade,
Or fly, like Faery birds, from grass
That mats the shore by which we pass.
She speaks.
On we pass; we rippling pass,
On sunset waters still as glass.
A vesper-sparrow flies above
Soft twittering to its woodland love.
A whippoorwill now calls afar;
And 'gainst the west, like some swift star,
A glittering jay flies screaming. Slim
The sand-snipes and king-fishers skim
Before us; and some evening thrush—
Who may discover where such sing?—
The silence rinses with a gush
Of mellow music bubbling.
He speaks.
On we pass.—Now let us oar
To yonder strip of ragged shore,
Where, from a rock with lichens hoar,
A ferny spring wells. Gliding by
The sulphur-colored firefly
Lights its pale lamp where mallows gloom,
And wild-bean and wild-mustard bloom.—
Some hunter there within the woods
Last fall encamped those ashes say
And campfire boughs.—The solitudes
Grow dreamy with the death of day.