He turn’d where birds through the gorgeous gloom

Of the woods went glancing on starry plume;

He track’d the brink of the shining lake,

By the tall canes feather’d in tuft and brake;

Till the path he chose, in its mazes, wound

To the very heart of the holy ground.

And there lay the water, as if enshrined

In a rocky urn, from the sun and wind,

Bearing the hues of the grove on high,

Far down through its dark still purity.