Oh, under the boughs let’s glide,
All hush, and sly, and unseen,
The brown Elm-trunk beside,
’Neath its roofing high of green;
Where, below, sport flimsy flies,
In programmes vain to trace,
As they dart, poise, dip, and rise,
Club, scatter, and wheel, and chase.
There, standing mute as ghosts,
Let’s watch the song-birds gay,
How they chant and shift their posts
’Mid the leaf-verandah’d day;
Albeit the sun, dense-hid,
Oft down the depths lets drop
On your cheek and twinkling lid
Bright spangles from the top;
Chief when, as now, the flight,
That none forestalls or sees,
Is felt of that outlaw sprite,
The vague I AM of the breeze.
Sibylline, ev’n at best,
Are Nature’s sounds and sights;
Still something sours the zest
Of her bravest of delights.
What a sighing’s now o’erhead!
Lo, half the choir have flown!
And leaves, all adust and dead,
Are earthward whirl’d and strown!
O’er this bower of songs and balm
A symboling change hath swept;
And we feel a foreboding qualm
Of truths but now that slept.
Sad thought-waves, one by one,
Joy’s sparkling strand o’erwhelm:
Then let’s out, once more, in the sun,
Away from this corpse-wood Elm!