Hid in the virgin wilderness,
The fretted Conway's Fairy Glen
This summer day reveals its charms
For painter's brush or poet's pen.
The air is flecked with night and day,
The ground is tiger-dusk and -gold,
The rocks and trees, empearled in haze,
A soft and far enchantment hold.
The place is peopled with shy winds
Whose fitful plumes waft dewy balm
From all the wildwood, and let fall
An incommunicable calm.
Through cleft rocks green with spray-wet moss,
Deep in the sweet wood's golden glooms,
The amber waters pulsing go,
With foam like creamy lily blooms.
Shuttles of shadow and of light
In-gleam and -gloom the watery woof
As rolls the endless stream away
Beneath the wind-swayed leafy roof.
(So life's swift shuttles dart and play,
As ceaseless speeds its flashing loom;
Our day is woven of sun and cloud,
A figured web of gold and gloom.)
God's arbor, this enchanted Glen!
The air is sentient with His name;
Put off thy shoes from off thy feet,
The trees are bursting into flame!