Wild honey from various thyme :: :: University of Virginia Library

'Mid the forest and the forest rocks,
'Mid the solitude where flowers are lonesome
In their silent flocks,
Cathal dwelt alone, yet in community:
For such shapes as none may see
Who has not from all mortal kindred gone,
Fairy races of the leaf-green sap
Caught him to their quietness and their smiles,
Drew him to the whortle-covert's lap,
Or led through hovering miles
Of Maytime leafage, crooned upon
By the dove and murmured through by heaven.

Round him hollies laughed, the peat and pine
Royally smelt together in those lands;
There the moss had little, good, moist hands;
Aspen catkins bounced in dew and shine;
Sweet-fern heaved the soil
Now with horn or fetlock, now with coil
Of the snake or neck-bend of the swan:
Open wind-flowers shone,
All their bending flowers innumerably wide.

Low down many birds were singing clear,
High above was the wood's rushing voice:
Cathal lay, and tranquil to his bosom,
Gliding with no fear,
Came the leaf-green Princess of his choice;
Close they breathed and yet were wrapt away
In their magic from all human day.
Fresh their kisses fell,
Cool with happiness, for happy things
Freshen for their bliss, and may not dwell
In the heat our carnal pleasure brings.

Solemn rolled the breezes overhead,
Dirge-like came the dove and nightingale
Through the never-ending solemn wail;
Cathal could not hear the dole that spread
Through the forest ways;
For like moss and briar
He had now no life of fret or fire,
Silent with the silent Fays,
With the wind-flowers, with the sweet-fern shootlets,
With the leaf-green Presences of trees.