Woodland Sketches

I love the warm bare earth and all
  That works and dreams thereon:
I love the seasons yet to fall:
  I love the ages gone,

The valleys with the sheeted grain,
  The river's smiling might,
The merry wind, the rustling rain,
  The vastness of the night.

I love the morning's flame, the steep
  Where down the vapour clings:
I love the clouds that float and sleep,
  And every bird that sings.

I love the purple shower that pours
  On far-off fields at even:
I love the pine-wood dusk whose floors
  Are like the courts of heaven.

I love the heaven's azure span,
  The grass beneath my feet:
I love the face of every man
  Whose thought is swift and sweet.

I let the wrangling world go by,
  And like an idle breath
Its echoes and its phantoms fly:
  I care no jot for death.

Time like a Titan bright and strong
  Spreads one enchanted gleam:
Each hour is but a fluted song,
  And life a lofty dream.

The sun looks over a little hill
And floods the valley with gold --
A torrent of gold;
And the hither field is green and still;
Beyond it a cloud outrolled,
Is glowing molten and bright;
And soon the hill, and the valley and all,
With a quiet fall,
Shall be gathered into the night.
And yet a moment more,
Out of the silent wood,
As if from the closing door
Of another world and another lovelier mood,
Hear'st thou the hermit pour --
So sweet! so magical! --
His golden music, ghostly beautiful.

How still it is here in the woods. The trees
Stand motionless, as if they did not dare
To stir, lest it should break the spell. The air
Hangs quiet as spaces in a marble frieze.
Even this little brook, that runs at ease,
Whispering and gurgling in its knotted bed,
Seems but to deepen with its curling thread
Of sound the shadowy sun-pierced silences.

Sometimes a hawk screams or a woodpecker
Startles the stillness from its fixed mood
With his loud careless tap. Sometimes I hear
The dreamy white-throat from some far off tree
Pipe slowly on the listening solitude
His five pure notes succeeding pensively.

The hills and leafless forests slowly yield
To the thick-driving snow. A little while
And night shall darken down. In shouting file
The woodmen's carts go by me homeward-wheeled,
Past the thin fading stubbles, half concealed,
Now golden-grey, sowed softly through with snow,
Where the last ploughman follows still his row,
Turning black furrows through the whitening field.

Far off the village lamps begin to gleam,
Fast drives the snow, and no man comes this way;
The hills grow wintery white, and bleak winds moan
About the naked uplands. I alone
Am neither sad, nor shelterless, nor grey,
Wrapped round with thought, content to watch and dream.