I

She knows its windings and its crooks; The wildflowers of its lovely woods; The crowfoot’s golden sisterhoods, That crowd its sunny nooks: The iris, whose blue blossoms seem Mab’s bonnets; and, each leaf a-gleam, The trillium’s fairy-books.

He knows its shallows and its pools, Its stair-like beds of rock that go, Foaming, with waterfall and flow, Where dart the minnow schools; Its grassy banks that herons haunt, Or where the woodcock call; and gaunt The mushrooms lift their stools.

She seeks the columbine and phlox, The bluebell, where the bushes fill The old stones of the ruined mill; She wades among the rocks: Her feet are rose-pearl in the stream; Her eyes are bluet-blue; a beam Lies on her nut-brown locks.

He comes with fishing-reel and line To angle in the darker deeps, Where the reflected forest sleeps Of sycamore and pine: And now and then a shadow swoops Above him of a hawk that stoops From skies as clear as wine.

And will he see, if they should meet, That she is fairer than each flower Her apron fills? and in that hour Feel life less incomplete?... He stops below: she walks above-- The brook floats down, as white as love, One blossom to his feet.

And she?--should she behold the tan Of manly face and honest eyes, Would all her soul idealize Him? make him more than man?... She dropped one blossom when she heard Soft whistling--was it man or bird, Whose notes so sweetly ran?

Where the woodcock call Page 161

The Idyll of the Standing-Stone]

They knew before they came to meet; For some divulging influence Had touched them thro’ the starry lens God holds to bring in beat Two hearts--her heart one haunting wish, And his--forgetful of the fish, Her flower at his feet.