I.

Green, watery jets of light let through The rippling foliage drenched with dew; Bland glow-worm glamours warm and dim Above the mystic vistas swim, Where, 'round the fountain's oozy urn, The limp, loose fronds of limber fern Wave dusky tresses thin and wet, Blue-filleted with violet. O'er roots that writhe in snaky knots The moss in amber cushions clots; From wattled walls of brier and brush The elder's misty attars gush; And, Argus-eyed, by knoll and bank The affluent wild rose flowers rank; And stol'n in shadowy retreats, In black, rich soil, your vision greets The colder undergrowths of woods, Damp, lushy-leaved, whose gloomier moods Turn all the life beneath to death And rottenness for their own breath. May-apples waxen-stemmed and large With their bloom-screening breadths of targe; Wake robins dark-green leaved, their stems Tipped with green, oval clumps of gems, As if some woodland Bacchus there A-braiding of his yellow hair With ivy-tod had idly tost His thyrsus there, and so had lost. Low blood root with its pallid bloom, The red life of its mother's womb Through all its ardent pulses fine Beating in scarlet veins of wine. And where the knotty eyes of trees Stare wide, like Fauns' at Dryades That lave smooth limbs in founts of spar, Shines many a wild-flower's tender star.