"Teach me wood-wisdom, I am petulant: Thou hast the wildness of a Dryad's eyes, The shyness of an Oread's, wild plant:-- Behold the bashful goddess where she lies Distinctly delicate!--inhabitant Ambrosial-earthed, star-cousin of the skies.
"Teach me thy wisdom, for, thro' knowing, yet, When I have drunk dull Lethe till each vein Thuds full oblivion, I shall not forget;-- For beauty known is beauty; to sustain Glad memories with life, while mad regret And sorrow perish, being Lethe slain."
"Teach thee my beauty being beautiful And beauty wise?--My slight perfections, whole As world, as man, in their creation full As old a Power's cogitation roll. Teach thee?--Presumption! thought is young and dull-- Question thy God what God is, soul what soul."
Thee freckled August, dozing hot and blonde Oft 'neath a wheat-stack in the white-topped mead-- In her full hair brown ox-eyed daisies wound-- O water-gurgler, lends a sleepy heed: Half-lidded eyes a purple iron-weed Blows slimly o'er; beyond, a path-found pond Basks flint-bright, hedged with pink-plumed pepper-grasses, A coigne for vainest dragonflies, which glasses Their blue in diamond.
Oft from some dusty locust, that thick weaves With crescent pulse-pods its thin foliage gray, Thou,--o'er the shambling lane, which past the sheaves Of sun-tanned oats winds, red with rutty clay, One league of rude rail-fence,--some panting day, When each parched meadow quivering vapor grieves, Nature's Astrologist, dost promise rain, In seeping language of the thirsty plain, Cool from the burning leaves.
And, in good faith, aye! best of faith, art true; And welcome that rune-chuckled forecasting, When up the faded fierceness of scorched blue Strong water-carrier winds big buckets bring, Black with stored freshness: how their dippers ring And flash and rattle! lavishing large dew On tall, good-humored corn that, streaming wet, Laughs long; while woods and leas, shut in a net Of mist, dream vague in view.
And thou, safe-houséd in some pawpaw bower Of close, broad, gold-green leaves, contented art In thy prediction, fall'n within the hour; While fuss the brown bees hiveward from the heart Of honey-filtering bloom; beneath the cart Droop pompous barnyard cocks damped by the shower: And deep-eyed August, bonnetless, a beech Hugs in disheveled beauty, safe from reach On starry moss and flower.