| |
| LIKE some wild child that laughs and weeps, | |
| Impatient of its mother’s arms, | |
| The wood brook from the hillside leaps, | |
| Eager to reach the neighboring farms: | |
| Complaining crystal in its throat | 5 |
| It bubbles a protesting note. | |
| |
| The wild-flowers that the forest weaves | |
| To deck it with are thrust aside; | |
| And all the little happy leaves, | |
| That would detain it, are denied: | 10 |
| It must be gone; it does not care; | |
| Away, away, no matter where. | |
| |
| Ah, if it knew what work awaits | |
| Beyond the woodland’s peace and rest, | |
| What toil and soil of man’s estates, | 15 |
| What contact with life’s sorriest— | |
| A different mind it then might keep | |
| And hush its frenzy into sleep. | |
| |
| Make of its trouble there a pool, | |
| A dim circumference filled with sky | 20 |
| And trees, wherein the beautiful | |
| Contemplates silence with a sigh, | |
| As mind communicates with mind | |
| Of intimate things they have in kind. | |
| |
| Encircled of the wood’s repose, | 25 |
| Contentment then to it would give | |
| The peace of lily and of rose, | |
| And love of all wild things that live; | |
| And let it serve as looking-glass | |
| For myths and dreams the wildwood has. | 30 |
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