In the faint sweet speech of the waters that whisper there.

Ah, what should darkness do in a world so fair?

The bent-grass heaves not, the couch-grass quails not or cowers;

The wind's kiss frets not the rowan's or aspen's hair.

But the silence trembles with passion of sound suppressed,

And the twilight quivers and yearns to the sunward, wrung

[Pg 130]

With love as with pain; and the wide wood's motionless breast

Is thrilled with a dumb desire that would fain find tongue

And palpitates, tongueless as she whom a man-snake stung,

Whose heart now heaves in the nightingale, never at rest

Nor satiated ever with song till her last be sung.

Is it rapture or terror that circles me round, and invades

Each vein of my life with hope—if it be not fear?

Each pulse that awakens my blood into rapture fades,

Each pulse that subsides into dread of a strange thing near

Requickens with sense of a terror less dread than dear.

Is peace not one with light in the deep green glades

Where summer at noonday slumbers? Is peace not here?

The tall thin stems of the firs, and the roof sublime

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