Through the day so dusty, worn and sere My heart was cool and free, Through the wild night, tempest-tossed and drear, My heart slept peacefully.
I found my heart in the heart of the woods, I looked on it and smiled; And over it still the woodland broods, As a mother over her child.
When the sun is growing weaker, And his look is meek and meeker, Comes the frost--the pale betrayer-- Light of foot, a stealthy slayer.
In the night abroad he stealeth, For each trembling leaf he feeleth; Something softened by its pleading, Kills it not but leaves it bleeding.
To-day the green hill was at strife With me; it robbed my feet of life. The wind that loudly speaks his mind, Said in my presence nothing kind. The sky’s clear face was from me turned, Behind a cloud his great fire burned.
An exile in his native cot, Who finds his very name forgot, Was I this afternoon, until At the wood’s edge behind the hill, A chipmunk flashed, and leapt a limb, And took my heart away with him.
Give me the poorest weed To satisfy my spirit’s need. The brownest blade of grass Will know and greet me when I pass.
Of their own feeling wrought, They live like simple, vital thought; The mind could not invent A better thing than Nature meant.
The weeks that walk in green Came to my willow lane, And wrapt me in their leafy screen Against the sun and rain.
Then far and far we went By stream and wood and steep, Until, all love-worn and joy-spent, I yielded me to sleep.
And they--they died unseen; Their ghosts are haunting me-- The gentle ghosts that walk in green Through vales of memory.
The streams that chattered in the cold Are sleeping in the sun; The winds of March were overbold Until their race was run.
O mad with haste the morning went, But now love-warm and deep, The fields, their first ambition spent, Lie in their noonday sleep.
Alone within the wind I lie, And reck not how the seasons go; The winter struggling through its snow, The light-winged summer flitting by.
I am not of the cloud nor mold, I move between the stars and flowers, I know the tingling touch of hours When all the storms of night unfold.
Within the wind world drifting free I hear naught of earth’s murmurings, Naught but the sound of songs and wings Among the tree-tops comes to me.