University of Virginia Library

HERE, in the early noon,
This day of infant June,
The sun, without a hint of latter summer rage,
Out of the hyacinth heavens, attempered, tender, mild,
Over the flowering earth, for ease of fosterage,
Broods, as a mother broods above her babbling child.
On trees and grass and flowers,
The yeanlings without guile of June's auroral hours,
In this still place of rest, 'midst London's surge enisled,
So near its noise and fret and yet removed so far,
An oasis of balm and peace and praising birds,
The softened midday star
Its gentle glory showers,
A benison of Heaven that hath no need of words.
Here all alone I stray:
For me the dreamy day,
For me alone the birds, the flowers, the blue, the green;
For me alone th'expanse of yonder lake serene,
On which the wild fowl feed, the cygnets oar their way,
As if of man's unrest they ne'er had troubled been.
A breath of days antique,
When yet the world was young, broods o'er the peaceful scene.
So little of our time
Of toil the quiet breathes, so stranger to our clime
Of strife and smoke and spleen
The drowsing noontide shows, the comtemplative eye
Is fain afar to seek,
Where, in the hovering haze, th'horizon meets the sky,
Some heaven-scaling blue of distant Attic peak,
Some grove of Gods high-perched on its Pentelic steep.
It seems the Gods of Greece
Might in the sunshine bask and in the verdant peace:
Here, with their calm, remote from all our modern wars,
Naïs, Cymodoce, Egeria might sleep.
Without, Whitechapel roars;
The surging City's nigh:
But, on these strifeless shores,
Beside this laughing lake, beneath yon smiling sky,
Hymettus' thymy height or Tempe might be near;
'Twere little strange if nymph or dryad should appear.

For me, alone, I say,
The quiet is.—But, nay!
Rude voices rend the calm devoutness of the day.
Out from between the isles tree-overgrown, that break
Yonder the crystal blue
Of the still sleeping lake,
There pushes into sight a swaying, rocking boat,
With man and maid for crew,
Such man and maid, alas!
As the grim city breeds to be a jarring note
Upon the sweet concent of flowers and skies and grass
And with the alien breath of their unlovely mirth
The festival to flout of new-reblossomed earth.

Yet, blesséd sooth to tell,
So potent is the spell
Of peace antique that pours from Heaven on all around,
So holy is the hour, so gracious is the ground,
Th'intruders to itself the sacred silence seems
To take and make them part
Of its assoiling calm and its far-seeking dreams.
Unto its quiet heart
It draws and wraps about with its own reverend peace
Th'invasive shallop, laden
With yonder half-fledged youth,
That, with his mate uncouth,
His flat-faced, paste-complexioned city maiden,
Fares, splashing, to and fro,
Among the ducks and geese,
Themselves beneath the spell divine immune that know
So well, they scarcely cease
Their hunt for food or play, to let them pass and go,
And in their errant wake, unfeared, are fain to follow.
So wholly doth the charm and sorcery of the time,
Suggestive of the past, the high, heroic Prime,
Unto itself subdue
The gross intrusive two,
The magic of the Old so overpowers the New,
The pregnant Past so floods and fills the Present hollow,
That yonder shallow painted skiff,
A-veer upon the wave, as if
It might at any moment cast its unaccustomed crew
Forth of its rocking side into the flooding blue,
There in the desecrated lake to wallow,
Might be Cyllene's bark;
For Venus' very dove,
Low-hovering in the air, the flowering reeds above,
Might pass yon skimming swallow;
Ay, and yon clumsy cockney pair,
With their uncertain ark,
Floating 'twixt lymph and air,
In this East London park,
Might for the dreaming eye be Daphne and Apollo.