Page:Songs of the Affections.pdf/202

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194
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.


Voices and lights of the lonely place!
By the freshest fern your path we trace;
By the brightest cups on the emerald moss,
Whose fairy goblets the turf emboss,
By the rainbow-glancing of insect-wings,
In a thousand mazy rings.

There sucks the bee, for the richest flowers
Are all your own through the summer-hours;
There the proud stag his fair image knows,
Traced on your glass beneath alder-boughs,
And the Halcyon's breast, like the skies array'd.
Gleams through the willow-shade.

But the wild sweet tales, that with elves and fays
Peopled your banks in the olden days,
And the memory left by departed love,
To your antique founts in glen and grove,
And the glory born of the poet's dreams—
These are your charms, bright streams!