| |
| IN 1 moss-prankt dells which the sunbeams flatter | |
| (And heaven it knoweth what that may mean; | |
| Meaning, however, is no great matter) | |
| Where woods are a-tremble, with rifts atween; | |
| |
| Through God’s own heather we wonned together, | 5 |
| I and my Willie (O love my love): | |
| I need hardly remark it was glorious weather, | |
| And flitterbats waved alow, above: | |
| |
| Boats were curtseying, rising, bowing | |
| (Boats in that climate are so polite), | 10 |
| And sands were a ribbon of green endowing, | |
| And O the sun-dazzle on bark and bight! | |
| |
| Through the rare red heather we danced together, | |
| (O love my Willie!) and smelt for flowers: | |
| I must mention again it was glorious weather, | 15 |
| Rhymes are so scarce in this world of ours:— | |
| |
| By rises that flushed with their purple favors, | |
| Through becks that brattled o’er grasses sheen, | |
| We walked or waded, we two young shavers, | |
| Thanking our stars we were both so green. | 20 |
| |
| We journeyed in parallels, I and Willie, | |
| In “fortunate parallels!” Butterflies, | |
| Hid in weltering shadows of daffodilly | |
| Or marjoram, kept making peacock’s eyes: | |
| |
| Song-birds darted about, some inky | 25 |
| As coal, some snowy (I ween) as curds; | |
| Or rosy as pinks, or as roses pinky— | |
| They reck of no eerie To-come, those birds! | |
| |
| But they skim over bents which the mill-stream washes, | |
| Or hang in the lift ’neath a white cloud’s hem; | 30 |
| They need no parasols, no galoshes; | |
| And good Mrs. Trimmer 2 she feedeth them. | |
| |
| Then we thrid God’s cowslips (as erst his heather) | |
| That endowed the wan grass with their golden blooms; | |
| And snapt—(it was perfectly charming weather)— | 35 |
| Our fingers at Fate and her goddess glooms: | |
| |
| And Willie ’gan sing—(O, his notes were fluty; | |
| Wafts fluttered them out to the white-winged sea)— | |
| Something made up of rhymes that have done much duty, | |
| Rhymes (better to put it) of “ancientry:” | 40 |
| |
| Bowers of flowers encountered showers | |
| In William’s carol (O love my Willie!) | |
| When he bade sorrow borrow from blithe To-morrow | |
| I quite forget what—say a daffodilly: | |
| |
| A nest in a hollow, “with buds to follow,” | 45 |
| I think occurred next in his nimble strain; | |
| And clay that was “kneaden” of course in Eden— | |
| A rhyme most novel, I do maintain: | |
| |
| Mists, bones, the singer himself, love-stories, | |
| And all least furlable things got “furled;” | 50 |
| Not with any design to conceal their glories, | |
| But simply and solely to rhyme with “world.” | |
| |
| O, if billows and pillows and hours and flowers, | |
| And all the brave rhymes of an elder day, | |
| Could be furled together this genial weather, | 55 |
| And carted, or carried on wafts away, | |
| Nor ever again trotted out—ay me! | |
| How much fewer volumes of verse there ’d be! | |
