AFTER LONG GRIEF AND PAIN
There is a place hung o’er of summer boughs
And dreamy skies wherein the gray hawk sleeps;
Where waters flow, within whose lazy deeps,
Like silvery prisms where the sunbeams drowse,
The minnows twinkle; where the bells of cows
Tinkle the stillness; and the bob-white keeps
Calling from meadows where the reaper reaps,
And children’s laughter haunts an old-time house:
A place where life wears ever an honest smell
Of hay and honey, sun and elder-bloom—
Like some sweet, modest girl—within her hair;
Where, with our love for comrade, we may dwell
Far from the city’s strife, whose cares consume—
Oh, take my hand and let me lead you there.
THE HAUNTED WOODLAND
Here in the golden darkness
And green night of the woods,
A flitting form I follow,
A shadow that eludes—
Or is it but the phantom
Of former forest moods?
The phantom of some fancy
I knew when I was young,
And in my dreaming boyhood,
The wildwood flow’rs among,
Young face to face with Faëry
Spoke in no unknown tongue.
Blue were her eyes, and golden
The nimbus of her hair;
And scarlet as a flower
Her mouth that kissed me there;
That kissed and bade me follow,
And smiled away my care.
A magic and a marvel
Lived in her word and look,
As down among the blossoms
She sate me by the brook,
And read me wonder-legends
In Nature’s Story Book.
Loved fairy-tales forgotten,
She never reads again,
Of beautiful enchantments
That haunt the sun and rain,
And, in the wind and water,
Chant a mysterious strain.
And so I search the forest,
Wherein my spirit feels,
In stream, or tree, or flower
Herself she still conceals—
But now she flies who followed,
Whom Earth no more reveals.