O Maytime Woods!

From the idyll "Wild Thorn and Lily"     O Maytime woods! O Maytime lanes and hours!     And stars, that knew how often there at night     Beside the path, where woodbine odors blew     Between the drowsy eyelids of the dusk, -     When, like a great, white, pearly moth, the moon     Hung silvering long windows of your room, -     I stood among the shrubs! The dark house slept.     I watched and waited for - I know not what! -     Some tremor of your gown: a velvet leaf's     Unfolding to caresses of the Spring:     The rustle of your footsteps: or the dew     Syllabling avowal on a tulip's lips     Of odorous scarlet: or the whispered word     Of something lovelier than new leaf or rose -     The word young lips half murmur in a dream:     Serene with sleep, light visions weigh her eyes:     And underneath her window blooms a quince.     The night is a sultana who doth rise     In slippered caution, to admit a prince,     Love, who her eunuchs and her lord defies.     Are these her dreams? or is it that the breeze     Pelts me with petals of the quince, and lifts     The Balm-o'-Gilead buds? and seems to squeeze     Aroma on aroma through sweet rifts     Of Eden, dripping through the rainy trees.     Along the path the buckeye trees begin     To heap their hills of blossoms. - Oh, that they     Were Romeo ladders, whereby I might win     Her chamber's sanctity! - where dreams must pray     About her soul! - That I might enter in! -     A dream, - and see the balsam scent erase     Its dim intrusion; and the starry night     Conclude majestic pomp; the virgin grace     Of every bud abashed before the white,     Pure passion-flower of her sleeping face.