Chapter VII

“And in my soul I see how, soon, shall rise,--
Still hidden to men’s eyes,--
Dim as the wind that round them treads,--
Hosts of spring-beauties, streaked with rosy reds,
And pale anemones, whose airy heads,
As to some fairy rhyme,
All day shall nod in delicate time:
And now, even now, white peal on peal
Of pearly bells,--that in bare boughs conceal
Themselves,--like snowy music, chime on chime,
The huckleberries to my gaze reveal--
Clusters, that soon shall toss
Above this green-starred moss,
That, like an emerald fire, gleams across
This forest-side, and from its moist deeps lifts
Slim, wire-like stems of seed;
Or, lichen-colored, glows with many a bead
Of cup-like blossoms: carpets where, I read,
When through the night’s dark rifts
The moonlight’s glimpsing splendor sifts,
The immaterial forms
With moonbeam-beckoning arms,
Of Fable and Romance,--
Myths that are born of whispers of the wind
And foam of falling waters, music-twinned--
Shall lead the legendary dance;
The dance that never stops,
Of Earth’s wild beauty on the green hill-tops.”