Orellana and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

[A back-lying farm but lately taken in;
Forlorn hill-slopes and grey, without a tree;
And at their base a waste of stony lea
Through which there creeps, too small to make a din,
Even where it slides over a rocky linn,
A stream, unvisited of bird or bee,
Its flowerless banks a bare sad sight to see.
All round, with ceaseless plaint, though spent and thin,
Like a lost child far-wandered from its home,
A querulous wind all day doth coldly roam.
Yet here, with sweet calm face, tending a cow,
Upon a rock a girl bareheaded sat
Singing unheard, while with unlifted brow
She twined the long wan grasses in her hat.]

222

II.

So sat the maiden: to the outward eye
The flower-like genius of a flowerless waste,
Dropped from the hand of Providence in haste
And left neglected here to wane and die.
—And yet, who knows what youthful fancies, ay,
What heavenly visitants descending graced
That lonely life, and with bright dreams displaced
The cloudy terrors of the natural sky?
Heaven lies about us in our infancy,
And heaven is not a thing of sight or sense;
Here on this desolate flower-forsaken lea
It opens to the eyes of innocence:
There is an Eden for us all, till we
Let in a devil who straightway drives us thence.

The first part of this sonnet, which has already appeared in the author's earlier volume of poems, is here reproduced as an introduction to its second part.