Written while Sailing in a Boat at Ebening.
How richly glows the water's breast
Before us, tinged with evening hues,
While, facing thus the crimson west,
The boat her silent course pursues!
And see how dark the backward stream!
A little moment past so smiling!
And still, perhaps, with faithless gleam,
Some other loiterers beguiling.
The Pleasures of a Forest Life.
MARIAN, thou seest, though courtly pleasures want;
Yet country sport in Sherwood is not scant:
For the soul-ravishing delicious sound
Of instrumental music we have found
The winged quiristers, with divers notes
Sent from their quaint recording pretty throats,
On every branch that compasseth our bower,
Without command contenting us each hour.
For arras hangings and rich tapestry
We have sweet Nature's best embroidery.
For thy steel glass, wherein thou wont'st to look,
Thy crystal eyes gaze in a crystal brook.
At court a flower or two did deck thy head,
Now with whole garlands it is circled ;
For what we want in wealth, we have in flowers;
And what we lose in halls we find in bowers.
The forest at Noonday.
THE noonday sun
Now shone upon the forest, one vast mass
Of mingling shade, whose brown magnificence
A narrow vale embosoms. There, huge caves,
Scoop'd in the dark base of those aëry rocks,
Mocking its moans, respond and roar for ever.
The meeting boughs and implicated leaves
Wove twilight o'er the Poet's path, as led
By love, or dream, or god, or mightier Death,
He sought in Nature's dearest haunt, some bank,
Her cradle, and his sepulchre. More dark
And dark the shades accumulate the oak,
Expanding its immense and knotty arms,
Embraces the light beech. The pyramids
Of the tall cedar, overarching, frame
Most solemn domes within, and far below,
Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky,
The ash and the acacia floating hang
Tremulous and pale. Like restless serpents, clothed
In rainbow and in fire, the parasites,
Starr'd with ten thousand blossoms, flow around
The grey trunks; and, as gamesome infants' eyes,
With gentle meanings, and most innocent wiles,
Fold their beams round the hearts of those that love,
These twine their tendrils, with the wedded boughs
Uniting their close union; the woven leaves
Make net-work of the dark blue light of day,
And the night's noontide clearness, mutable
As shapes in the weird clouds. Soft mossy lawns
Beneath these canopies extend their swells,
Fragrant with perfumed herbs, and eyed with blooms
Minute, yet beautiful. One darkest glen
Sends from its woods of musk-rose, twined with jasmine,
A soul-dissolving odour, to invite
To some more lovely mystery. Through the dell,
Silence and twilight here, twin-sisters, keep
Their noonday watch, and sail among the shades,
Like vaporous shapes half-seen; beyond, a well,
Dark, gleaming, and of most translucent wave,
Images all the woven boughs above,
And each depending leaf, and every speck
Of azure sky, darting between their chasms;
Nor aught else in the liquid mirror laves
Its portraiture, but some inconstant star
Between one foliaged lattice twinkling fair,
Or painted bird, sleeping beneath the moon,
Or gorgeous insect, floating motionless,
Unconscious of the day, ere yet his wings
Have spread their glories to the gaze of noon.
INTO that forest far they thence him led,
Where was their dwelling, in a pleasant glade
With mountains round about environed;
And mighty woods which did the valley shade
And like a stately theatre it made,
Spreading itself into a spacious plain;
And in the midst a little river play'd
Amongst the pumy stones, which seem'd to plain
With gentle murmur that his course they did restrain.
Beside the same a dainty place there lay,
Planted with myrtle-trees and laurels green,
In which the birds sung many a lovely lay
Of God's high praise and of their love's sweet teen,
As it an earthly paradise had been;
In whose enclosed shadow there was pight
A fair pavilion, scarcely to be seen,
The which was all within most richly dight,
That greatest princes living it might well delight.
The Pine Forest by the Sea.
WE wander'd to the Pine Forest
That skirts the ocean's foam;
The lightest wind was in its nest,
The tempest in its home.
The whisp'ring waves were half asleep,
The clouds were gone to play,
And on the bosom of the deep
The smile of heaven lay;
It seem'd as if the hour were one
Sent from beyond the skies,
Which scatter'd from above the sun
A light of Paradise!
We paused amid the pines that stood
The giants of the waste,
Tortured by storms to shapes as rude
As serpents interlaced,-
And soothed by every azure breath
That under heaven is blown,
To harmonies and hues beneath,
As tender as its own:
Now all the tree-tops lay asleep
Like green waves on the sea;
As still as is the silent deep
The ocean-woods may be.
How calm it was! the silence there
By such a chain was bound,
That even the busy woodpecker
Made stiller by her sound
The inviolable quietness;
The breath of peace we drew,
With its soft motion made not less
The calm that round us grew.
There seem'd from the remotest seat
Of the wide mountain waste,
To the soft flower beneath our feet,
A magic circle traced.
A spirit interfused around,
A thrilling silent life;
To momentary peace it bound
Our mortal nature's strife ;
And still I felt the centre of
The magic circle there,
Was one fair form that fill'd with love
The lifeless atmosphere.
We paused beside the pools that lie
Under the forest bough;
Each seem'd as 'twere a little sky
Gulf'd in a world below;
A firmament of purple light
Which in the dark earth lay,
More boundless than the depth of night,
And purer than the day
In which the lovely forests grew,
As in the upper air,
More perfect both in shape and hue
Than any spreading there.
There lay the glade and neighbouring lawn,
And through the dark green woods
The white sun, twinkling like the dawn
Out of a speckled cloud.
Sweet views which in our world above
Can never well be seen,
Were imaged by the water's love
Of that fair forest green:
And all was interfused beneath
With an Elysian glow,
An atmosphere without a breath,
A softer day below.
O EVER welcome are the grand old woods,
Fresh in young April, quick with shooting green;
Or rich in June, with luxury of leaves :
Right lovely are they in their growing pride,
But lovelier in their glory of decay.
Right joyous are they when the happy birds
Salute the morn with thousand-throated songs,
Or pour soft vespers to the setting sun,
Singing the summer day to balmy rest.
Or when alone the cuckoo's monotone
Lulls drowsy noon; or when sweet Philomel
Trills passionate music to the listening night,
And wakes the dreaming rose-buds with her song.
O fair and joyous are the woods in summer!
But when the birds are still, and faded leaves
Fall in the silence, silently and slow,
Then their solemnities have deeper joy,
Though less of rapture. And it is the prime
Of the year's growth, and prodigality
Of ever-new delights, to linger long
When Queenly Autumn, laden with the wealth
Of all the seasons, passes in her pomp.
EARTH, Ocean, Air, beloved brotherhood!
If our great Mother have imbued my soul
With aught of natural piety to feel
Your love, and recompense the boon with mine;
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