Its rotting fence one scarcely sees Through sumac and wild blackberries. Thick elder and the bramble-rose, Big ox-eyed daisies where the bees Hang droning in repose.
The little lizards lie all day Gray on its rocks of lichen-gray; And there, gay Ariels of the sun, The butterflies make bright its way, And paths where chipmunks run.
Its lyric there the redbird lifts, While, overhead, the swallow drifts 'Neath sun-soaked clouds of palest cream,-- In which the wind makes azure rifts,-- And there the wood-doves dream.
The brown grasshoppers rasp and bound 'Mid weeds and briars that hedge it round; And in its grass-grown ruts,--where stirs The harmless snake,--mole-crickets sound; O'erhead the locust whirs.
At evening, when the sad west turns To lonely night a cheek that burns, The tree-toads in the wild-plum sing; And ghosts of long-dead flowers and ferns The wind wakes, whispering.
Here Spring her first frail violets blows; Broadcast her whitest wind-flowers sows Through starry mosses amber-fair, And fronded ferns and briar-rose, Hart's-tongue and maidenhair.
Here fungus life is beautiful; Slim mushroom and the thick toadstool,-- As various colored as are blooms,-- Dot their damp cones through shadows cool, And breathe forth rain perfumes.
Here stray the wandering cows to rest; The calling cat-bird builds its nest In spicewood bushes dark and deep; Here raps the woodpecker its best, And here young rabbits leap.
Beech, oak, and cedar; hickories; The pawpaw and persimmon trees; And tangled vines and sumac-brush, Make dark the daylight, where the bees Drone, and the wood-springs gush.
Here to pale melancholy moons, In haunted nights of dreamy Junes, Wails wildly the weird whippoorwill, Whose strains, like those the owlet croons, Wild woods with phantoms fill.
When the ice was thick on the flower-beds, And the sleet was caked on the briar; When the frost was down in the brown bulb's heads, And the ways were clogged with mire:
When the snow on syringa and spiræa-tree Seemed the ghosts of perished flowers; And the days were sorry as sorry could be, And Time limped, cursing his fardel of hours:
Heigh-ho! had I not a book and the logs, That chirped with the sap in the burning?-- Or was it the frogs in the far-off bogs? Or the bush-sparrow's song at the turning?