To the trees, which surely knew it in partaking of the

grace.

XXXI.

Where's no foot of human creature
How could reach a human hand?

And if this be work of nature,

Why has nature turned so bland,

Breaking off from other wild-work? It was hard to

understand.

XXXII,

Was she weary of rough-doing,
Of the bramble and the thorn?

Did she pause in tender rueing
Here of all her sylvan scorn?

Or in mock of art's deceiving was the sudden mildness worn ?

XXXIII.

Or could this same bower (I fancied)

Be the work of Dryad strong,

Who, surviving all that chancëd

In the world's old pagan wrong,

Lay hid, feeding in the woodland on the last true poet's

song?

XXXIV.

Or was this the house of fairies,
Left, because of the rough ways,
Unassoiled by Ave Marys

Which the passing pilgrim prays,

And beyond St. Catherine's chiming on the blessed

Sabbath days?

XXXV.

So, young muser, I sate listening
To my fancy's wildest word:

On a sudden, through the glistening

Leaves around, a little stirred,

Came a sound, a sense of music which was rather felt than heard.

XXXVI.

Softly, finely, it inwound me;
From the world it shut me in,—

Like a fountain, falling round me,

Which with silver waters thin

Clips a little water Naiad sitting smilingly within.

XXXVII.

Whence the music came, who knoweth ?

I know nothing but indeed

:

Pan or Faunus never bloweth

So much sweetness from a reed

Which has sucked the milk of waters at the oldest

riverhead.

XXXVIII.

Never lark the sun can waken

With such sweetness! when the lark,

The high planets overtaking

In the half-evanished Dark,

Casts his singing to their singing, like an arrow to the mark.

XXXIX.

Never nightingale so singeth:

Oh, she leans on thorny tree

And her poet-song she flingeth

Over pain to victory!

Yet she neversings such music,-or she sings it not to me.

XL.

Never blackbirds, never thrushes

Nor small finches sing as sweet,

When the sun strikes through the bushes
To their crimson clinging feet,

And their pretty eyes look sideways to the summer heavens complete.

XLI.

If it were a bird, it seemed

Most like Chaucer's, which, in sooth,

He of green and azure dreamed,

While it sate in spirit-ruth

On that bier of a crowned lady, singing nigh her silent mouth.

XLII.

If it were a bird ?-ah, sceptic,
Give me yea' or give me 'nay'—

Though my soul were nympholeptic
As I heard that virëlay,

You may stoop your pride to pardon, for my sin is far

away!

XLIII.

I rose up in exaltation

And an inward trembling heat,

And (it seemed) in geste of passion

Dropped the music to my feet

Like a garment rustling downwards-such a silence followed it!

XLIV.

Heart and head beat through the quiet

Full and heavily, though slower:

In the song, I think, and by it,

Mystic Presences of power

Had up-snatched me to the Timeless, then returned me to the Hour.

XLV

In a child-abstraction lifted,
Straightway from the bower I past,

Foot and soul being dimly drifted

Through the greenwood, till, at last,

In the hill-top's open sunshine I all consciously was

cast.

XLVI.

Face to face with the true mountains

I stood silently and still,

Drawing strength from fancy's dauntings,
From the air about the bill

And from Nature's open mercies and most debonair goodwill.

XLVII.

Oh, the golden-hearted daisies
Witnessed there, before my youth,

To the truth of things, with praises

Of the beauty of the truth;

And I woke to Nature's real, laughing joyfully for both.

XLVIII.

And I said within me, laughing,
I have found a bower to-day,

A green lusus, fashioned half in

Chance and half in Nature's play,

And a little bird sings nigh it, I will nevermore missay.

XLIX.

Henceforth, I will be the fairy

Of this bower not built by one;
I will go there, sad or merry,

With each morning's benison,

And the bird shall be my harper in the dream-hall I have won.