My heart a heaven, opening like a flower,

A sweeter world where I in wonder strayed,

Begirt with shapes of beauty and the power

Of dreams that moved through that enchanted clime

With changing breaths of rhyme,

Were all gone lifeless now like those white leaves,

That hang all winter, shivering dead and blind

Among the sinewy beeches in the wind,

That vainly calls and grieves.

Ah! I will set no more mine overtaskèd brain

To barren search and toil that beareth nought,

Forever following with sorefooted pain

The crossing pathways of unbournèd thought;

But let it go, as one that hath no skill,

To take what shape it will,

An ant slow-burrowing in the earthy gloom,

A spider bathing in the dew at morn,

Or a brown bee in wayward fancy borne

From hidden bloom to bloom.

Hither and thither o'er the rocking grass

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