All through the tepid summer night The starless sky had poured a cool Monotony of pleasant rain In music beautiful.
And for an hour I sat to watch Clouds moving on majestic feet; And heard down avenues of night Their hearts of thunder beat.
Prodigious limbs, far-veined with gold, Pulsed fiery life o'er wood and plain, While, scattered, fell from giant hands The largess of the rain.
Beholding at each lightning flash Their generous silver on the sod, In meek devotion bowed, I thanked These almoners of God.
A vein of flame, the long creek crawls Beneath dark brows of woodland walls, Red where the sunset's crimson falls. One wiry leg drawn to his breast, Neck-shrunk, at solitary rest, The heron stands among the bars.
The whimpering creek breaks on the stone, Where for a while the new moon shone With one white star and one alone. Lank haunter of lone marshy lands The melancholy heron stands, Then, clamoring, dives into the stars.
When the moon hangs low Over an afterglow, Lilac and lily; When the stars are high, Wisps in a windless sky, Silverly stilly:--
He, who will lean, his inner ear compelling, May hear the spirit of the forest stream Its story to a wildwood flower telling, That is no flower but some ascended dream.
When the dawn's first lines Show dimly through the pines Along the mountain; When the stars are few, And starry lies the dew Around the fountain:--
Who will, may hear, within her leafy dwelling, The spirit of the oak-tree, great and strong, Its romance to the wildwood streamlet telling, That is no stream but some descended song.
Can I forget how, when you stood 'Mid orchards whence the bloom had fled, Stars made the orchards seem a-bud, And weighed the sighing boughs o'erhead With shining ghosts of blossoms dead?
Or when you bowed, a lily tall, Above your drowsy lilies, slim, Transparent pale, that by the wall Like cups of moonlight seemed to swim, Brimmed with faint fragrance to the brim?
And in the cloud that lingered low-- A silent pallor in the west-- There stirred and beat a golden glow, Like some great heart that could not rest, A heart of gold within its breast.
Your heart, your soul were in the wild: You loved to hear the whippoorwill
Lament its love, when, dewy mild, The harvest scent made musk the hill. You loved to walk, where oft had trod The red deer, o'er the fallen hush Of Fall's torn leaves, when th' ivy-tod Hung frosty by each berried bush.