Chapter IV

And then I heard it singing,
The wind that touched my hair,
A song of wild expression,
A song that called in session
The wild-flowers sweetly swinging,
The wild-flowers lightly flinging
Their tresses to the air.
And first, beneath a bramble arch,
The bloodroot rose; each bloom a torch
Of hollow snow, within which, bright,
The calyx grottoed golden light.

Hepatica and bluet,
And gold corydalis,
Arose as to an aria;
Then wild-phlox and dentaria,
In rapture, ere they knew it,
Trooped forward, nodding to it,
Faint as a first star is.

And then a music,--to the ear
Inaudible,--I seemed to hear;
A symphony that seemed to rise
And speak in colors to the eyes.

I saw the Jacob’s-ladder
Ring violet peal on peal
Of perfume, azure-swinging;
The bluebell slimly ringing
Its purple chimes; and, gladder,
Green note on note, the madder
Bells of the Solomon’s-seal.

Now very near, now faintly lost,
I saw their fragrant music tossed;
Mixed dimly with white interludes
Of trilliums starring cool the woods.
Then choral, solitary,
I saw the celandine
Smite bright its golden cymbals,
The starwort shake its timbrels,
The whiteheart’s horns of Fairy,
With many a flourish airy,
Strike silvery into line.

And, lo, my soul they seemed to draw,
By chords of loveliness and awe
Into a Fairy world afar
Where all man’s dreams and longings are.

V

And then a spirit looked down at me
Out of the deeps of the opal morn:
Its eyes were blue as a sunlit sea,
And young with the joy of a star that has just been born:
And I seemed to hear, with my soul, the rose of its cool mouth say:--

“Long I lay, long I lay,
High on the Hills of the Break-of-Day,
Where ever the light is green and gray,
And the gleam of the moon is a silvery spray,
And the stars are glimmering bubbles.
Now from the Hills of the Break-of-Day
I come, I come, on a rainbow ray,
To laugh and sparkle, to leap and play,
And blow from the face of the world away,
Like mists, its griefs and troubles.”