By Wold And Wood.

I.     Green, watery jets of light let through      The rippling foliage drenched with dew;     Bland glow-worm glamours warm and dim     Above the mystic vistas swim,     Where, 'round the fountain's oozy urn,     The limp, loose fronds of limber fern     Wave dusky tresses thin and wet,     Blue-filleted with violet.     O'er roots that writhe in snaky knots     The moss in amber cushions clots;     From wattled walls of brier and brush     The elder's misty attars gush;     And, Argus-eyed, by knoll and bank     The affluent wild rose flowers rank;     And stol'n in shadowy retreats,     In black, rich soil, your vision greets     The colder undergrowths of woods,     Damp, lushy-leaved, whose gloomier moods     Turn all the life beneath to death     And rottenness for their own breath.     May-apples waxen-stemmed and large     With their bloom-screening breadths of targe;     Wake robins dark-green leaved, their stems     Tipped with green, oval clumps of gems,     As if some woodland Bacchus there     A-braiding of his yellow hair     With ivy-tod had idly tost     His thyrsus there, and so had lost.     Low blood root with its pallid bloom,     The red life of its mother's womb     Through all its ardent pulses fine     Beating in scarlet veins of wine.     And where the knotty eyes of trees     Stare wide, like Fauns' at Dryades     That lave smooth limbs in founts of spar,     Shines many a wild-flower's tender star.              II.     The scummy pond sleeps lazily,     Clad thick with lilies, and the bee     Reels boisterous as a Bassarid     Above the bloated green frog hid     In lush wan calamus and grass,     Beside the water's stagnant glass.     The piebald dragon-fly, like one     A-weary of the world and sun,     Comes blindly blundering along,     A pedagogue, gaunt, lean, and long,     Large-headed naturalist with wise,     Great, glaring goggles on his eyes.     And dry and hot the fragrant mint     Pours grateful odors without stint     From cool, clay banks of cressy streams,     Rare as the musks of rich hareems,     And hot as some sultana's breath     With turbulent passions or with death.     A haze of floating saffron; sound     Of shy, crisp creepings o'er the ground;     The dip and stir of twig and leaf;     Tempestuous gusts of spices brief     From elder bosks and sassafras;     Wind-cuffs that dodge the laughing grass;     Sharp, sudden songs and whisperings     That hint at untold hidden things,     Pan and Sylvanus that of old     Kept sacred each wild wood and wold.     A wily light beneath the trees     Quivers and dusks with ev'ry breeze;     Mayhap some Hamadryad who,     Culling her morning meal of dew     From frail accustomed cups of flowers -     Some Satyr watching through the bowers -     Had, when his goat hoof snapped and pressed     A brittle branch, shrunk back distressed,     Startled, her wild, tumultuous hair     Bathing her limbs one instant there.