To look at him, I say, as he would stand in the sunshine at his own gate, it was difficult to imagine that aught of a very serious nature ailed him. But in the case of a man so habitually active his sauntering there was a bad sign. He was emphatically one of those men with whom life and work are the same thing--one whose sun was at the setting when he could work no more, and who would probably have cared little to survive his capacity for working.
To-day the woods are trembling through and through With shimmering forms, that flash into my view, Then melt in green as dawn-stars melt in blue. The leaves that wave against my cheek caress Like women's hands; the embracing boughs express A subtlety of mighty tenderness; The copse-depths into little noises start, That sound anon like beatings of a heart, Anon like talk 'twixt lips not far apart. The beech dreams balm, as a dreamer hums a song, Through whose vague sweet float expirations strong From lithe young hickories, breathing deep and long With stress and urgence bold of inward spring, And ecstasy of burgeoning. Now, since the dew-plashed road of morn is dry, Come daintier smells, linked in soft company, Like velvet-slippered ladies pacing by. Long muscadines, Like Jove's locks curled round foreheads of great pines, Breathe out ambrosial passion from their vines. I pray with mosses, ferns and flowers shy That hide like gentle nuns from human eye, To lift adoring odors to the sky. I hear faint bridal-sighs of blissful green, Dying to kindred silences serene, As dim lights melt into a pleasant sheen. I start at fragmentary whispers, blown From undertalks of leafy loves unknown, Vague purports sweet, of inarticulate tone.
Dreaming of gods, men, nuns and brides, between Old companies of oaks that inward lean To join their radiant amplitudes of green, I slowly move, with ranging looks that pass Up from the matted miracles of grass Into yon veined complex of space, Where sky and leafage interlace So close the heaven of blue is seen Inwoven with a heaven of green.
I wander to the zigzag-cornered fence Where sassafras, intrenched in brambles dense, Contests with stolid vehemence The march of culture, setting limb and thorn, Like pikes, against the army of the corn.