Oft in the woodless places
I feel their dim control;
The wildflowers’ perished faces,
The great trees’ vanished races,
That meet me soul to soul:
Oft in the woodless places
I feel their dim control.
IV
Crab-apple buds, whose bells
The mouth of April kissed;
That hang,—like rosy shells
Around a Naiad’s wrist,—
Pink as dawn-tinted mist.
And paw-paw buds, whose dark
Deep auburn blossoms shake
On boughs,—as ’neath the bark
A dryad’s eyes awake,—
Brown as a midnight lake.
These, with symbolic blooms
Of wind-flower and wild-phlox,
I found among the glooms
Of hill-lost woods and rocks,
Lairs of the hare and fox.
The beetle in the brush,
The bird about the creek,
The bee within the hush,
And I, whose love was meek,
Stood still to hear these speak
The language that records,
In flower-syllables,
The hieroglyphic words
Of beauty, who enspells
The world and aye compels.