In The Wood

The waterfall, deep in the wood,     Talked drowsily with solitude,     A soft, insistent sound of foam,     That filled with sleep the forest's dome,     Where, like some dream of dusk, she stood     Accentuating solitude.     The crickets' tinkling chips of sound     Strewed dim the twilight-twinkling ground;     A whippoorwill began to cry,     And glimmering through the sober sky     A bat went on its drunken round,     Its shadow following on the ground.     Then from a bush, an elder-copse,     That spiced the dark with musky tops,     What seemed, at first, a shadow came     And took her hand and spoke her name,     And kissed her where, in starry drops,     The dew orbed on the elder-tops.     The glaucous glow of fireflies     Flickered the dusk; and foxlike eyes     Peered from the shadows; and the hush     Murmured a word of wind and rush     Of fluttering waters, fragrant sighs,     And dreams unseen of mortal eyes.     The beetle flung its burr of sound     Against the hush and clung there, wound     In night's deep mane: then, in a tree,     A grig began deliberately     To file the stillness: all around     A wire of shrillness seemed unwound.     I looked for those two lovers there;     His ardent eyes, her passionate hair.     The moon looked down, slow-climbing wan     Heaven's slope of azure: they were gone:     But where they'd passed I heard the air     Sigh, faint with sweetness of her hair.