Sweet Fern

The subtle power in perfume found     Nor priest nor sibyl vainly learned;     On Grecian shrine or Aztec mound     No censer idly burned.     That power the old-time worships knew,     The Corybantes frenzied dance,     The Pythian priestess swooning through     The wonderland of trance.     And Nature holds, in wood and field,     Her thousand sunlit censers still;     To spells of flower and shrub we yield     Against or with our will.     I climbed a hill path strange and new     With slow feet, pausing at each turn;     A sudden waft of west wind blew     The breath of the sweet fern.     That fragrance from my vision swept     The alien landscape; in its stead,     Up fairer hills of youth I stepped,     As light of heart as tread.     I saw my boyhoods lakelet shine     Once more through rifts of woodland shade;     I knew my rivers winding line     By morning mist betrayed.     With me Junes freshness, lapsing brook,     Murmurs of leaf and bee, the call     Of birds, and one in voice and look     In keeping with them all.     A fern beside the way we went     She plucked, and, smiling, held it up,     While from her hand the wild, sweet scent     I drank as from a cup.     O potent witchery of smell!     The dust-dry leaves to life return,     And she who plucked them owns the spell     And lifts her ghostly fern.     Or sense or spirit? Who shall say     What touch the chord of memory thrills?     It passed, and left the August day     Ablaze on lonely hills.