The Wood-Path.

Here doth white Spring white violets show,     Broadcast doth white, frail wind-flowers sow      Through starry mosses amber-fair,     As delicate as ferns that grow,      Hart's-tongue and maiden-hair.     Here fungus life is beautiful,     White mushroom and the thick toad-stool      As various colored as wild blooms;     Existences that love the cool,      Distinct in rank perfumes.     Here stray the wandering cows to rest,     The calling cat-bird builds her nest      In spice-wood bushes dark and deep;     Here raps the woodpecker his best,      And here young rabbits leap.     Tall butternuts and hickories,     The pawpaw and persimmon trees,         The beech, the chestnut, and the oak,     Wall shadows huge, like ghosts of bees         Through which gold sun-bits soak.     Here to pale melancholy moons.     In haunted nights of dreamy Junes,         Wails wildly the weird whippoorwill,     Whose mournful and demonic tunes         Wild woods with phantoms fill.