If I could hear the rushing waters call
In the wild exultation of release,
Dear, I might turn my face unto the wall
And fall asleep in peace!
[Misled.]
Thro’ moss, and bracken, and purple bloom,
With a glitter of gorses here and there,
Shoulder deep in the dewy bloom,
My love, I follow you everywhere!
By faint sweet signs my soul divines,
Dear heart, at dawning you came this way,
By the jangled bells of the columbines,
And the ruffled gold of the gorses gay.
By hill and hollow, by mead and lawn,
Thro’ shine and shade of dingle and glade,
Fast and far as I hurry on
My eager seeking you still evade.
But, were you shod with the errant breeze,
Spirit of shadow and fire and dew,
O’er trackless deserts of lands and seas
Still would I follow and find out you.
Like a dazzle of sparks from a glowing brand,
’Mid the tender green of the feathery fern
And nodding sedge, by the light gale fanned,
The Indian pinks in the sunlight burn;
And the wide, cool cups of the corn flower brim
With the sapphire’s splendor of heaven’s own blue,
In sylvan hollows and dingles dim,
Still sweet with a hint of the morn—and you!
For here is the print of your slender foot,
And the rose that fell from your braided hair,
In the lush deep moss at the bilberry’s root—
And the scent of lilacs is in the air!
Do lilacs bloom in the wild green wood?
Do roses drop from the bilberry bough?
Answer me, little Red Riding Hood!
You are hiding there in the bracken, now!
Come out of your covert, my Bonny Belle—
I see the glint of your eyes sweet blue—
Your yellow locks—ah, you know full well
Your scarlet mantle has told on you;
Come out this minute, you laughing minx!
—By all the dryads of wood and wold!
’Tis only a cluster of Indian pinks
And corn flowers, under the gorses’ gold.
[At Milking-Time.]
“Coe, Berry-brown! Hie, Thistledown!
Make haste; the milking-time is come!
The bells are ringing in the town,
Tho’ all the green hillside is dumb,
And Morn’s white curtain, half withdrawn,
Just shows a rosy glimpse of dawn.”
Tinkle, tinkle in the pail:
“Ah! my heart, if Tom should fail!
See the vapors, white as curd,
By the waking winds are stirred,
And the east is brightening slow
Tom is long a-field, I know!
“Coe, Bell! Come Bright! Miss Lilywhite,
I see you hiding in the croft!
By yon steep stair of ruddy light
The sun is climbing fast aloft;
What makes the stealthy, creeping chill
That hangs about the morning still?”
Tinkle, tinkle in the pail:
“Some one saunters up the vale,
Pauses at the brook awhile,
Dawdles at the meadow stile—
Well! if loitering be a crime,
Some one takes his own sweet time!