University of Virginia Library

II

Distilled out of the swift enormous skies
But nursed in darkness old, inscrutable,

93

'Twixt Sinodun and its twin mount Harphill
By Thames I know a Wood-Spring takes its rise,
Azured and overbough'd, a margin still
Untainted, only known to beasts and birds,
And alive, like all things wholly beautiful,
Exquisite, deathless, seeming self-engendered.
Sand-pulses, bubbles, are its only words;
How wide the region of the mountainous earth
Cistern'd for the making of that little pool!
And there what spirit-freshness comes to birth!
Thither I voyage, to a dream surrendered,
And rays are golden there, and noon is cool.