V

He speaks, rowing:

See, sweetheart, how the lilies lay Their lambent leaves about our way; Or, pollen-dusty, bob and float Their nenuphars around our boat.-- The middle of the stream is reached Three strokes from where our boat was beached.

Look up. You scarce can see the sky, Through trees that lean, dark, dense and high; That, coiled with grape and trailing vine, Build vast a roof of shade and shine; A house of leaves, where shadows walk, And whispering winds and waters talk.

There is no path. The saplings choke The trunks they spring from. There an oak, Floods from the Alleghanies bore, Lies rotting; and that sycamore, Which lays its bulk from shore to shore,-- Uprooted by the rain,--perchance May be the bridge to some romance: Its heart of punk, a spongy white, Glows, ghostly foxfire, in the night.

Now opening through a willow fringe The waters creep, one tawny tinge Of sunset; and on either marge The cottonwoods make walls of shade, With breezy balsam pungent: large, The gradual hills loom; darkly fade The waters wherein herons wade, Or wing, like Faëry birds, from grass That mats the shore by which we pass.

She speaks:

On we pass; we rippling pass, On sunset waters still as glass. A vesper-sparrow flies above, Soft twittering, to its woodland love. A tufted-titmouse calls afar; And from the west, like some swift star, A glittering jay flies screaming. Slim The sand-snipes and kingfishers skim Before us; and some twilight thrush-- Who may discover where such sing?-- The silence rinses with a gush Of limpid music bubbling.

He speaks:

On we pass.--Now let us oar To yonder strip of ragged shore, Where, from a rock with lichens hoar, A ferny spring falls, babbling frore Through woodland mosses. Gliding by The sulphur-colored firefly Lights its pale lamp where mallows gloom, And wild-bean and wild-mustard bloom.-- Some hunter there within the woods Last fall encamped, those ashes say And campfire boughs.--The solitudes Grow dreamy with the death of day.