To it the heaven shows The secret of its soul; true images Of dreams that form its aspect; and with these Reflected in its countenance it goes, With pictures of the skies, the dusk and dawn, Within its breast, as every blossom knows, For them to gaze upon.
Through it the world-soul sends Its heart’s creating pulse that beats and sings The music of maternity whence springs All life; and shaping earthly ends,-- From the deep sources of the heavens drawn,-- Planting its ways with beauty, on it wends, On and for ever on.
Under the boughs of spring She swung in the old rope-swing.
Her cheeks, with their happy blood, Glowed pink as the apple-bud.
Her eyes, with their deep delight, Shone glad as the stars of night.
Her curls, with their romp and fun, Tossed hoiden to wind and sun.
Her lips, with their laughter shrill, Rippled like some wild rill.
Under the boughs of spring She swung in the old rope-swing.
And I,--who leaned on the fence, Watching her innocence,
As, under the boughs that bent, Now high, now low, she went,
In her soul the ecstasies Of the stars, the brooks, the breeze,--
Had given the rest of my years, With their, blessings, and hopes, and fears,
To have been as she was then; And, just for a moment, again
A boy in the old rope-swing Under the boughs of spring.
I feel thee as one feels a flower’s, A dead flower’s fragrance in a room,-- A dim, gray grief that haunts the hours With sad perfume.
Thou charm’st me as a ghostly lily Might charm a garden’s withered space, With the pale pathos and the chilly Hush of thy face.
I hearken in thy fogs; I hearken When, like the phantom of dead Night, With immaterial limbs they darken The day with white.
With wrecks of rain and mad winds, heaping Red ruins of riven rose and leaf, Make sad my heart, O Autumn! sweeping The world with grief.
How does it come that now I go Down ways made blue with bluets’ eyes? Along the creek-road as the crow With mocking laughter flies?
A wild bird beats a crippled wing To lure me from its brush-built nest; Then, like a brook, I hear it sing Its wildwood happiest.
Beyond the orchard hills are dells Of knee-deep huckleberries, white With little bell-blooms, May-time swells With sweetness and delight.
The faun wakes in me, wild and keen, And, with the joy the rathe months hold, Kicks happy heels in deeps of green And rolls in deeper gold.