civil mode Direct your choice upon a road;

For one and all, or high or low, Will lead you where you wish to go; And one and all go night and day Over the hills and far away!

Forest of Montargis, 1878.

p. 4III—THE CANOE SPEAKS

p. 4

On the great streams the ships may go About men’s business to and fro. But I, the egg-shell pinnace, sleep On crystal waters ankle-deep: I, whose diminutive design, Of sweeter cedar, pithier pine, Is fashioned on so frail a mould, A hand may launch, a hand withhold: I, rather, with the leaping trout Wind, among lilies, in and out; I, the unnamed, inviolate, Green, rustic rivers, navigate; My dipping paddle scarcely shakes p. 5The berry in the bramble-brakes; Still forth on my green way I wend Beside the cottage garden-end; And by the nested angler fare, And take the lovers unaware. By willow wood and water-wheel Speedily fleets my touching keel; By all retired and shady spots Where prosper dim forget-me-nots; By meadows where at afternoon The growing maidens troop in June To loose their girdles on the grass. Ah! speedier than before the glass The backward toilet goes; and swift As swallows quiver, robe and shift And the rough country stockings lie Around each young divinity. When, following the recondite brook, Sudden upon this scene I look, p. 6And light with unfamiliar face On chaste Diana’s bathing-place, Loud ring the hills about and all The shallows are abandoned. . . .

On

p. 5

p. 6

p. 7IV

p. 7

It is the season now to go About the country high and low, Among the lilacs hand in hand, And two by two in fairy land.

It

The brooding boy, the sighing maid, Wholly fain and half afraid, Now meet along the hazel’d brook To pass and linger, pause and look.

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