The Spring.

"O Fons Bandusi!"     Push back the brambles, berry-blue,     The hollowed spring is full in view;     Deep tangled with luxuriant fern     Its rock-imbedded crystal urn.     Not for the loneliness that keeps     The coigne wherein its silence sleeps;     Not for wild butterflies that sway     Their pansy pinions all the day     Above its mirror; nor the bee,     Nor dragon-fly which passing see     Themselves reflected in its spar;     Not for the one white, liquid star     That twinkles in its firmament,     Nor moon-shot clouds so slowly sent     Athwart it when the kindly night     Beads all its grasses with the light,     Small jewels of the dimpled dew;     Not for the day's reflected blue,     Nor the quaint, dainty colored stones     That dance within it where it moans;     Not for all these I love to sit     In silence and to gaze in it.     But, know, a nymph with merry eyes     Meets mine within its laughing skies;     A graceful, naked nymph who plays     All the long fragrant summer days     With instant sight of bees and birds,     And speaks with them in water-words.     One for whose nakedness the air     Weaves moony mists, and on whose hair,     Unfilleted, the night will set     That lone star as a coronet.