In red-bud brakes and flowery
Acclivities of berry;
In dogwood dingles, showery
With dew, where wrens make merry?
Or drifts of swarming cherry?
In valleys of wild-strawberries,
And of the clumped May-apple;
Or cloud-like trees of hawberries,
With which the south-winds grapple,
That brook and pathway dapple?
With eyes of far forgetfulness,—
Like some white wood-thing’s daughter,
Whose feet are bee-like fretfulness,—
To see her run like water
Through boughs that slipped or caught her.
O Spring, to seek, yet find you not,
To search and still continue;
To glimpse, to touch, but bind you not,
To lose and then to win you,
All sweet evasion in you.
In pearly, peach-blush distances
You gleam; the woods are braided
Of myths, of dream-existences;—
There, where the brook is shaded,
Some splendor surely faded.
O presence, like the primrose’s,
Once more I feel your power!
In rainy scents of dim roses
I breathe you for an hour,
Elusive as a flower.
II
THE WOOD SPIRIT
Ah me! I still remember
How flushed, before the shower,
The dusk was; like a scarlet rose,
Or blood-red poppy-flower.
Now heaven is starred; the moonlight
Lays blurs upon the grain—
You may not know it from white frost,
The moonlight on the rain.