There is no place so sweet as the greenwoods
In summer, heaven and earth awake with sounds
Melodial; the ripple of the breeze
Amongst the sun-green leaves, and pliant boughs,
Just like the rustle of young summer's dress;
The songs of birds, and the low mystic hum
Of bees amongst their floral treasuries;
Sweetest of all, the cool and liquid tones
Of brooks--nature's true-hearted bards, who draw
Bright inspirations from a pebbled ridge,
And frame them into sweetest melody.
There's poetry in every pendent leaf
If we could read them truly; but our hearts
Grow strange to nature's language in the world,
Nor can translate their heaven lore. Ev'ry change
From bud to full-blown ripeness, thence again
To sereness and decay, is as the flow
Of a short tale, whose moral is life's history.
The woods were made for poets and all dreamers,
Men who philosophize Time's hour-glass down,
And younger grow, till with the last shot sand--
They die. The very leaves are fanciful,
And write their maxims on the sward in sun
And shadow. Here I'll lay me down and dream
An hour away amongst these violets!
O my heart joys to gaze upon the sky
Gleaming athwart green leaves, like happiness
Above the gloom and shadow of the world!
Then, thought first feels its attribute divine,
And like a callow eagle spreads its wings,
And makes its rest amid the lumin'd heavens.
The lark sings poized above me in the sun,
Like Moslem in his gilded minaret
Calling the faithful unto matin prayer.
There would my spirit follow thee, sweet bird,
Ling'ring for ever in the midway air,
Earth shrouded 'neath me by ascending mists,
And sunny-crested cloudlets, like the base
Of bright Imagination's airy halls,
Whose roof is the star-fretted empyrean:
Thence let the world hear my full gushing joy,
And thrill at pleasures they can never know,
Hear the sweet tumult of my throbbing breast,
Like a clear spring of joyance bubbling up
And overflowing time and space with streams;
Whilst I, wrapt in my own high blessedness,
Drain the sweet nectar shareless and alone.