The Swing

It was like floating in a blessed dream to roam     Across green meadows, far from home,     With only trees and quivering sky to hedge the sight,     Dazzling the eyes with strange delight.     Such wide, wide fields I had never seen, and never dreamed     Could be; and wonderful it seemed     To wander over green and under green and run     Unwatched even of the shining sun.     One tree there was that held a wrinkled creaking bough     Far over the grass, hanging low;     And a swing from it hanging drew us near and made     New brightness beneath that doming shade.     For there my sisters swung long hours delightedly,     And there delighted clambered I;     And all our voices shrilled as one when up we flung     And into the stinging sharp leaves swung.     Then in a garden dense with bramble and sweet flowers     Where honeysuckle a new sweetness pours,     We sat and ate and drank. Well I remember how     We were all shaded by one bough     Bending with red fruit over our uplifted eyes,     Teasing our well-watched covetousness.     And then we went back happy to the empty swing,     But I was tired of everything     Except the grass and trees and the wide shadows there     Widening slowly everywhere.     It was like swinging in a solemn dream to roam     In a strange air, far from home--     Until I saw the shadows suddenly wake and move,     And float, float down from above.     Then I ran quickly back, round the large gloomy trees,     O with what shivering unease!     And stumbled where they waited, and was far too glad,     Finding them, to be afraid or sad.     --Then waited an unforgetting year once more to see     So wide a sky, so great a tree.