Ii

My pavement-wearied feet again Tread the rough streets whose ways are pain, Hot with the sun’s last sullen beam, And yet--I dream! Dream when I wake, and at high, blinding Noon, Or when the moon Mocks the sad City in her sullen night That burns too bright! So sweet my visions seem That from this sordid smoke and dust I turn, Turn where the dim Wood-world calls out to me And where the forest-virgins I half see With green mysterious fingers beckoning! Where vine-wreathed woodland altars sunlit burn, Or Dryads weave their mystic rounds and sing, Sing high, sing low, with magic cadences That once the wild oaks of Dodona heard; And every wood-note bids me burst asunder The bonds that hold me from the leaf-hid bird! I quaff thee, O Nepenthe! Ah, the wonder Grows that there be who scorn not wealth and ease, Who still will choose the street-life, rough and blurred, Who will not quest you, O Hesperides!...