Under an elm

Oh, under the boughs let’s glide, All hush, and sly, and unseen, The brown Elm-trunk beside, ’Neath its roofing high of green;

Where, below, sport flimsy flies, In programmes vain to trace, As they dart, poise, dip, and rise, Club, scatter, and wheel, and chase.

There, standing mute as ghosts, Let’s watch the song-birds gay, How they chant and shift their posts ’Mid the leaf-verandah’d day;

Albeit the sun, dense-hid, Oft down the depths lets drop On your cheek and twinkling lid Bright spangles from the top;

Chief when, as now, the flight, That none forestalls or sees, Is felt of that outlaw sprite, The vague I AM of the breeze.

Sibylline, ev’n at best, Are Nature’s sounds and sights; Still something sours the zest Of her bravest of delights.

What a sighing’s now o’erhead! Lo, half the choir have flown! And leaves, all adust and dead, Are earthward whirl’d and strown!

O’er this bower of songs and balm A symboling change hath swept; And we feel a foreboding qualm Of truths but now that slept.

Sad thought-waves, one by one, Joy’s sparkling strand o’erwhelm: Then let’s out, once more, in the sun, Away from this corpse-wood Elm!