Ah, love, just two years have gone Since then.... I remember, you Wore a dress of billowy blue Muslin.--_Was_ it “lawn”?--
And your apron still I see-- All its whiteness cherry-stained-- Which you held; wherein I rained Ripeness from the tree.
And I asked you--for, you know, To my eyes your serious eyes Said such deep philosophies-- If you ’d read Rousseau.
You remember how a chance, Somewhat like to mine, one June Happened him at castle Toune, Over there in France?
And a cherry dropping fair On your cheek, I, envying it, Cried--remembering Rousseau’s wit-- “Would my lips were there!” ...
Here we are at last. We ’ll row Down the stream.--The west has narrowed To one streak of rose, deep-arrowed.-- There ’s our skiff below.
Waters flowing dark and bright In the sunlight or the moon, Fill my soul with such delight As some visible music might; As some slow, majestic tune Made material to the sight.
Blossoms colored like the skies, Sunset-hued and tame or wild, Fill my soul with such surmise As the mind might realize If one’s thoughts, all undefiled, Should take form before the eyes.
So to me do these appeal; So they sway me every hour: Letting all their beauty steal On my soul to make it feel Through a rivulet or flower, More than any words reveal.
See, sweetheart, how the lilies lay Their lambent leaves about our way; Or, pollen-dusty, bob and float Their nenuphars around our boat.-- The middle of the stream is reached Three strokes from where our boat was beached.
Look up. You scarce can see the sky, Through trees that lean, dark, dense and high; That, coiled with grape and trailing vine, Build vast a roof of shade and shine; A house of leaves, where shadows walk, And whispering winds and waters talk.
There is no path. The saplings choke The trunks they spring from. There an oak, Floods from the Alleghanies bore, Lies rotting; and that sycamore, Which lays its bulk from shore to shore,-- Uprooted by the rain,--perchance May be the bridge to some romance: Its heart of punk, a spongy white, Glows, ghostly foxfire, in the night.
Now opening through a willow fringe The waters creep, one tawny tinge Of sunset; and on either marge The cottonwoods make walls of shade, With breezy balsam pungent: large, The gradual hills loom; darkly fade The waters wherein herons wade, Or wing, like Faëry birds, from grass That mats the shore by which we pass.