Harvesting.

I. NOON.     The tanned and sultry noon climbs high     Up gleaming reaches of the sky;     Below the balmy belts of pines     The cliff-lunged river laps and shines;     Adown the aromatic dell     Sifts the warm harvest's musky smell.     And, oh! above one sees and hears     The brawny-throated harvesters;     Their red brows beaded with the heat,     By twos and threes among the wheat     Flash their hot sickles' slenderness     In loops of shine; and sing, and sing,     Like some mad troop of piping Pan,     Along the hills that swoon or ring     With sounds of Ariel airiness     That haunted freckled Caliban:     "O ho! O ho! 'tis noon, I say;         The roses blow.     Away, away, above the hay     The burly bees to the roses gay     Hum love-tunes all the livelong day,         So low! so low!     The roses' Minnesingers they." II. TWILIGHT.     Up velvet lawns of lilac skies     The tawny moon begins to rise     Behind low blue-black hills of trees,     As rises from faint Siren seas,     To rock in purple deeps, hip-hid,     A virgin-bosom'd Oceanid.     Gaunt shadows crouch by rock and wood,     Like hairy Satyrs, grim and rude,     Till the white Dryads of the moon     Come noiseless in their silver shoon     To beautify them with their love.     The sweet, sad notes I hear, I hear,     Beyond dim pines and mellow hills,     Of some fair maiden harvester,     The lovely Limnad of the grove     Whose singing charms me while it kills:     "O deep! O deep! the twilight rare      Pales on to sleep;     And fair, so fair! fades the rich air.     The fountain shines in its ferny lair,     Where the cold Nymph sits in her oozy hair      To weep, to weep,     For a mortal youth who is not there."