And, lo, my soul they seemed to draw,
By chords of loveliness and awe
Into a Fairy world afar
Where all man’s dreams and longings are.
V
And then a spirit looked down at me
Out of the deeps of the opal morn:
Its eyes were blue as a sunlit sea,
And young with the joy of a star that has just been born:
And I seemed to hear, with my soul, the rose of its cool mouth say:—
“Long I lay, long I lay,
High on the Hills of the Break-of-Day,
Where ever the light is green and gray,
And the gleam of the moon is a silvery spray,
And the stars are glimmering bubbles.
Now from the Hills of the Break-of-Day
I come, I come, on a rainbow ray,
To laugh and sparkle, to leap and play,
And blow from the face of the world away,
Like mists, its griefs and troubles.”
VI
And now that the dawn is everywhere,
Let us take this path through this wild, green place,
Where the rattlesnake-weed shows its yellow face,
And the lichens cover the rocks with lace:
Where tannin-tinct is the woodland air,
Let us take this path through the oaks where, thin,
The low leaves whisper, “The day is fair”;
And waters murmur, “Come in, come in,
Where you can hark to our waterfalls,
And the wind of their foam can play with your hair,
And soothe away care.—
Come here, come here, where our water calls.”
Berry blossoms, that seem to flow
As the winds blow,
Blackberry blossoms swing and sway
To and fro
Along the way,
Like ocean spray on a breezy day,
Over the green of the grass as foam on the green of a bay,
When the world is white and green with the white and the green of May.
VII
The dewberries are blooming now;
The days are long, the nights are short;
Each haw-tree and each dogwood bough
Is bleached with bloom, and seems a part,—
Reflected palely on her brow,—
Of dreams that haunt the Year’s young heart.
But this will pass; and presently
The world forget the spring that was;
And underneath the wild-plum tree,
’Mid hornet hum and wild-bee’s buzz,
Summer, in dreamy reverie,
Will sit all warm and amorous.