Page:Southern Life in Southern Literature.djvu/217

Their heart to harmony, and where intrudes
⁠No discord on thy melodies. Oh, where,
⁠Among the sweet musicians of the air.
Is one so dear as thou to these old solitudes?

Ha! what a burst was that! The Æolian strain
⁠Goes floating through the tangled passages
Of the still woods; and now it comes again,
A multitudinous melody, like a rain
⁠Of glassy music under echoing trees,
Close by a ringing lake. It wraps the soul
⁠With a bright harmony of happiness,
Even as a gem is wrapped when round it roll
⁠Thin waves of crimson flame, till we become,
⁠With the excess of perfect pleasure, dumb,
And pant like a swift runner clinging to the goal.

I cannot love the man who doth not love,
⁠As men love light, the song of happy birds;
For the first visions that my boy-heart wove,
To fill its sleep with, were that I did rove
⁠Through the fresh woods, what time the snowy herds
Of morning clouds shrunk from the advancing sun,
⁠Into the depths of Heaven s blue heart, as words
From the poet s lips float gently, one by one,
⁠And vanish in the human heart; and then
⁠I reveled in such songs, and sorrowed, when,
With noon-heat overwrought, the music-gush was done.

I would, sweet bird, that I might live with thee,
⁠Amid the eloquent grandeur of these shades,
Alone with Nature!—but it may not be:
I have to struggle with the stormy sea