New songs of innocence :: :: University of Virginia Library

Come with me, Willie, down the glen
Where summer leaves for joy are shining;
Beyond this frowning castle's ken
Are bowers of oak and birk entwining.
The hazel stoops beside the pool,
And palm-like rise the feathery ashes,
And under beechen shadow cool
The gleam of falling water flashes.

Why, what a strange green world is here
Kept hid alike from hill and valley!
Beside its streamlets crystal clear
The airs of parting summer dally.
Nay, brings not this caressing breeze
A breath of life from sources olden?
Survives within this world of trees
Ought of the age that men call golden?—

I feel a mystic life around
In these green labyrinthine mazes;
A voice is hid in every sound,
An eye from every covert gazes.

Within that rocky cleft might dwell
A Naiad yet in peace abiding,
By mossy boulders guarded well,
In foamy veil her beauties hiding.

What horns are these that next surprise
Our shelving path above the water?
Crouched in the fern a satyr lies
In waiting for the river's daughter.
Ah, Willie, let us turn and flee
Back to our refuge on the mountain!
As little chance for you or me
As for the Naiad of the fountain!

Here on the height we breathe again
In calmer, clearer air, though colder.
Farewell the dim secluded glen,
The dripping rock, the mossy boulder,
The tangled brake that dryads fills—
'Tis but a place for owls to grope in—
Ours be the freedom of the hill
That ever unto heaven lies open!