 | Days and Hours |  |
123
NOON.
I
The winds are hush'd, the clouds have ceased to sail,And lie like islands in the Ocean-day,
The flowers hang down their heads, and far away
A faint bell tinkles in a sun-drown'd vale:
No voice but the cicala's whirring note—
No motion but the grasshoppers that leap—
The reaper pours into his burning throat
The last drops of his flask, and falls asleep.
II
The rippling flood of a clear mountain streamFleets by, and makes sweet babble with the stones;
The sleepy music with its murmuring tones
Lays me at noontide in Arcadian dream;
Hard by soft night of summer bowers is seen,
With trellised vintage curtaining a cove
Whose diamond mirror paints the amber-green,
The glooming bunches, and the boughs above.
124
III
Finches, and moths, and gold-dropt dragon fliesDip in their wings, and a young village-daughter
Is bending with her pitcher o'er the water;
Her round arm imaged, and her laughing eyes,
And the fair brow amid the flowing hair,
Look like the Nymph's for Hylas coming up,
Pictured among the leaves, and fruitage there;
Or the boy's self a-drowning with his cup.
IV
Up thro' the vines, her urn upon her head,Her feet unsandal'd, and her dark locks free,
She takes her way, a lovely thing to see,
And like a skylark starting from its bed,
A glancing meteor, or a tongue of flame,
Or virgin waters gushing from their springs,
Her hope flies up—her heart is pure of blame—
On wings of sound—she sings! oh how she sings!
| Days and Hours | |