How feebly chirps the cricket!
How thin the tree-toads cry!
Blurred in the wild-rose thicket
Gleams wet the firefly.—
This way toward home is nearest;
Of weeds and briers clearest....
We ’ll meet to-morrow, dearest;
Till then, dear heart, good-by.
III
They meet again under the greenwood tree. He speaks:
Here at last! And do you know
That again you ’ve kept me waiting?
Wondering, anticipating
That your “yes” meant “no.”
Now you ’re here we ’ll have our day....
Let us take this daisied hollow,
And beneath these beeches follow
This wild strip of way
To the stream; wherein are seen
Stealing gar and darting minnow;
Over which snake-feeders winnow
Wings of black and green.
Like a cactus flames the sun;
And the mighty weaver, Even,
Tenuous colored, there in heaven,
His rich weft ’s begun....
How I love you! from the time—
You remember, do you not?—
When, within your orchard-plot,
I was reading rhyme,
As I told you. And ’t was thus:—
“By the blue Trinacrian sea,
Far in pastoral Sicily
With Theocritus”—
That I answered you who asked.
But the curious part was this:—
That the whole thing was amiss;
That the Greek but masked