There is a place embanked with brush
Three wooded knobs beyond,
Lost, in a valley, where the lush
Wild eglantine blows blond.
Where light the dogwoods earliest
Their torches of white fires,
And, bee-bewildered, east and west
The red haws build their spires.
The wild crab-apples’ flowery sprays
Blur through the pensive gloom
A fragrant pink; and by lone ways
The close blackberries bloom.
I love the spot: a shallow brook
Slips from the forest, near
A cane-brake and a violet nook;
Its rustling depths so clear
The minnows glimmer where they glide
Above its rocky bed:
A boyhood-haunted brook, not wide,
That has its sparkling head
Among the rainy hills; and drops
By five low waterfalls—
Wild music of a hundred stops—
Between the forests’ walls:
Down to a water-gate, that hangs
Across the stream; a dull
Portcullis rude, whose wooden fangs
The moss makes beautiful.
The brass-bright dragonflies about
Its seeding grasses swim;
The streaked wasps, worrying in and out,
Dart sleepily and slim.
Here in the moon-gold moss, that glows
Like pools of moonlight, dies
The pale anemone; and blows
The bluet, blue as skies.
And, where in April tenderly
The wild geranium made
A thin, peculiar fragrance, we,
Cool in pellucid shade,
Found wild strawberries just a-bud;
Wild berries, tart and fresh,—
Pale scarlet as a wood-bird’s blood,—
That May’s low vines would mesh.
Once from that hill a farm-house ’mid
Deep orchards—cozy brown,—
In lilacs and old roses hid,—
With picket-fence looked down.
O’er ruins now the roses guard;
The plum and seckel-pear
And apricot rot on the sward
Their wasted ripeness there.
Again when huckleberries blow
Their waxen bells I’ll tread
That dear accustomed way; and go
Adown that orchard; led
To that avoided spot, which seems
The haunt of vanished springs;
Lost as the hills in drowsy dreams
Of visionary things.