Laurella and other poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

O pure delight, to wander forth to-day!
It is the very depth of the mid-May,
When, call it the late spring or early summer,
The season is sweet. Of birds the latest comer
Has ended the glad trouble of its nest:
Blue eggs are warm beneath the thrush's breast,
And in the hedges you may hear the cheep
Of new fledged wrens—prey for the stealthy creep
Of prowling puss.

Sweet violets all are past;
A month ago we plucked the very last
That hid themselves among their long-drawn leaves:
But while the haunter of the garden grieves
For them and all those other tender things
Which blossomed lavishly in earliest Spring's
Yet virgin coronal, there comes a puff
Of sun-begotten fragrance—just enough
To speak a bed of wall-flowers, where great bees
Revel, and butterflies by twos and threes

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Giddily whirl and sun their damp white wings.
And here chaste lily-of-the-valley rings
Faint perfume from her delicate bells. Queen roses
Begin to ope. One languidly discloses
The crimson richness of her bosom's bloom.
What summer odours sleep within the womb
Of these unopened buds clustering near!
What splendid promise for the coming year
In yonder snow of blossomed apple-trees,
Where finches peck and twitter at their ease.
Balanced on swaying boughs. One whets his beak
Against the bark, then with a sudden tweak,
Plucks at the very bosom of a flower,
Scattering the petals in a rosy shower;
But lo! a fat green grub is in his bill,
So the wise gardener lets him peck his fill
Unmurdered.

I to-day keep holiday,
In honour of this ‘merrie month of May,’
And mean to grasp all natural delights,
And store them up in verse for winter nights;
As bees store honey. Not a thing too mean
For these my rhymes—too ‘common or unclean;’
For all things ope their hearts to him who loves
The fresh leaf-language of the fields and groves,
The mere delight of breathing the soft air
Of meadowy lawns; who can find 'scape from care

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In a wood's innocent haunts of healthful ease,
Respite from heart-ache in a mountain breeze,
And then return refreshed, strung to his best,
And nobler for his little space of rest.

A meadow with its wealth of deepening grass,
Which the cloud-shadows lazily overpass,
Receives me from the garden—every blade
Drinking the sunshine. Taller heads are swayed
Noddingly o'er the sprouted green below,
By little puffs of gusty wind, which blow
The ruffling surface into silvery flaws.
Above my head a rook pompously caws
To two black friends, who pompously reply,
As home to yonder noisy elms they fly,
Where swings their stick-built city.

All around
Among the dandelions, golden-crowned
Or silken-plumed, and in the daisied grass,
Small birds, with impudent eyes like beads of glass,
Flutter, bob up, and flutter down again,
With busy chirpings—hunting, not in vain,
For moths and insects which most harbour there;
And one for wantonness chases through the air
A butterfly, which scarcely seems to shun
The rapid pounces of his foe; and one
Is angered at the buzzing of a bee,
And snaps at her right viciously; but she

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Booms off unhurt upon her task. In glee
The swifts are shrieking, high in air, and wheeling
On arrowy wings. My heart swells with a feeling
Of most exuberant life—life, far and wide
Diffused, and throbbing deep.

The sunny side
Of all this ancient, unshorn hawthorn hedge
Whereby I skirt along the meadow's edge,
Is bursting into flower. A wasp, in quest
Of rotten wood to temper for her nest,
Explores each cranny of the gnarled hedge-foot,
Where faded violets clasp each knotted root,
And ashen trunks shoot up with leaves unborn
And clustered blossoms.

In the sprouted corn
Patrician rooks strut and talk politics
To chattering daws and magpies, proud to mix
In such august society.

Yon slope
Of pasture, where the daisies have full scope
With buttercups and cowslips to prepare
A path for June, is shadowed here and there
With grand horse-chestnuts, holding high their thyrses
Of pale magnificent blooms. The sunlight pierces
Quite through those queenlike limes, charming their green
Fresh foliage into depths of emerald sheen;

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And golden gleams fall slanting on the cows,
Study for Cuyp or Cooper, as they browse
The juicy verdure. In the illumined sky,
Where the white-piléd clouds float softly by,
A lark is somewhere singing, as if huge gladness
Had filled his heart with an ethereal madness.

Here in the cool of this sequestered lane
The early spring seems half revived again,
For violets linger late by the path-side,
And tufted primroses, serenely-eyed,
Peep up from mossy banks, where sunshine plays
Fitfully with tree-shadows—slanting rays
Strike through the beech-tops, tempered as they pass
To a tenderer leafy light. This craggy mass
Of upthrust rock is wreathed with delicate bells
Of meek wood-sorrel, which in secret dells
Spring fairies hang with dew. O it is sweet,
This quiet spot where I have bent my feet!
Sweet with faint vernal smells—sweet with May-light,
Sweet with a sound of water out of sight,
Filtering through roots of fern, with fairy fronds
Quaintly uncurling—into little ponds
Hidden in moss; or somewhere underground,
Lullingly murmuring to the flowers around.

Fresh is the beauty of this woodland glade,
Where mid-leg deep among the whorts I wade,
Startling wood-butterflies and new-born moths

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From every bush; or where the streamlet froths
O'er an abrupt cascade, and gurgles down
With bells of foam upon its waters—brown
And clear as mighty ale by Odin quaffed
In Walhalla, sunshine in every draught.
The air is full of the loud song of thrushes
And blackbirds. Unawares my footstep crushes
Clumps of moist-rooted blue-bells, as I listen.
The varnished leaves of the dark hollies glisten
Among the light green of the underwood,
Tangled round veteran oaks, whose trunks have stood
Since Shakspeare's May-time. Hark! the cuckoos' note
Swells afar through the grove, and seems to float
To me from out the dreamland of the past.
Ay me! the present fleets away too fast
For one who all day long would love to lie
Gazing in the sweet glimpses of the sky,
Caught through the tree-tops—soothed by the soft cooing
Of wood-quests, and the velvet bees pursuing
Their flowery task. But soon the air grows chill,
And I have yet to climb a stretch of hill
Ere I can strike for home across the plain
With easy conscience.

In this old churchyard,

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Where the unsparing hand of Time has marred
The rude inscription on each fall'n headstone,
Yet gently touched the spot—that it has grown
The solemner for it, I could grow one with rest.
The sun has crowned the silence of the west
With a pale glory—like the aureole
Round a saint's forehead, when the parting soul
Stands tiptoe for its flight. The wan light falls
Upon the grey church porch, and ivied walls,
And time-worn tower—transfiguring the place
To something mystic in its dreamlike grace.
The very nettles give a sense of peace;
The simple weeds that feel the day's increase
Through all their blood, upsprouting lush and rank
Under the hedge—or crown yon brambly bank
With branching umbels; the meek celandine;
Ivy, whose leaves and clustered berries shine
In the grave light; this speedwell at my feet,
Seem all parts of a vision strange and sweet:
Seen once and since forgotten—ages past,
Now dimly understood.
It could not last,
That dreamy mood: the gleam has died away,
The air grows cooler as the broadening grey
Swallows the sunset; and the noisy caw

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Of homeward-flying rooks breaks through the awe
That held my spirit—and now the earth appears
Nought but the work-day world of smiles and tears.
My day is ended!