-Now o'er the soothed accordant heart we feel
A sympathetic twilight slowly steal,
And ever, as we fondly muse, we find
The soft gloom deepening on the tranquil mind.
Stay! pensive, sadly-pleasing visions, stay!
Ah, no! as fades the vale, they fade away :
Yet still the tender, vacant gloom remains;
Still the cold cheek its shuddering tear retains.
The song of mountain-streams, unheard by day,
Now hardly heard, beguiles my homeward way.
Air listens, like the sleeping water, still
To catch the spiritual music of the hill,
Broke only by the slow clock, tolling deep,
Or shout that wakes the ferry-man from sleep;
The echoed hoof nearing the distant shore,
The boat's first motion, made with dashing oar;
Sound of closed gate, across the water borne,
Hurrying the timid hare through rustling corn;
The sportive outcry of the mocking owl,
And, at long intervals, the mill-dog's howl;
The distant forge's swinging thump profound;
Or yell, in the deep woods, of lonely hound.
T was a valley filled with sweetest sounds,
A languid music haunted everywhere,
Like those with which a summer eve abounds
From rustling corn, and song-birds calling clear, Down sloping uplands, which some wood surrounds, With tinkling rills just heard, but not too near;
Or lowing cattle on the distant plain,
And swing of far-off bells, now caught, then lost again.
The golden-belted bees hummed in the air;
The tall, silk grasses bent and waved along;
The trees slept in the sleeping sunbeam's glare;
The dreamy river chimed its under-song,
And took its own free course without a care;
Amid the boughs did lute-tongued songsters throng,
Until the valley throbbed beneath their lays,
And echo echo chased, through many a leafy maze.
And shapes were there like spirits of the flowers,
Sent down to see the summer-beauties dress,
And feed their fragrant mouths with silver showers;
Their eyes peeped out from many a green recess,
And their fair forms made light the thick-set bowers;
The very flowers seemed eager to caress
Such loving sisters, and the boughs long-leaved
Clustered to catch the sighs their pearl-flushed bosoms heaved.
One, with her warm and milk-white arms outspread,
On tip-toe tripped along a sunlit glade;
Half turned the matchless sculpture of her head,
And half shook down her silken circling braid;
Her back-blown scarf an archéd rainbow made;
She seemed to float on air, so light she sped;
Skimming the wavy flowers, as she passed by,
With fair and printless feet, like clouds along the sky.
One sat alone within a shady nook,
With wild-wood songs the lazy hours beguiling;
Or looking at her shadow in the brook,
Trying to frown, then at the effort smiling;
Her laughing eyes mocked every serious look ;
'Twas as if Love stood at himself reviling:
She threw in flowers, and watched them float away,
Then at her beauty looked, then sang a sweeter lay.
Some lay like Thetis' nymphs along the shore,
With ocean-pearl combing their golden locks,
And singing to the waves for evermore ;
Sinking, like flowers at eve, beside the rocks,
If but a sound above the muffled roar
Of the low waves was heard. In little flocks,
Others went trooping through the wooded alleys,
Their kirtles glancing white, like streams in sunny valleys.
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