In the green-lit solitudes of the road beneath the woods as clear, reflected light an emerald doth renew -- from moss to canopy roams a white butterfly, but, -- fleeting memory -- already fades from view: The impact of my tread, beneath the gathering night, makes mystical the shade, the pine-trees' towering height, and the road that's lost to sight where my soul had thought to see the splendour, pale and dead, of the tarn's serenity. I shrink from every noise. What may the next one prove? And this shrinking dread I love, and this lurking noise I fear. To sorrows as to joys my soul entire I give. Would I wish to perish here? Or, hidden, there to live? What hour endures for aye 'neath the darkling forest cowl? Is it dawn or death of day, this twilight gloom forlorn? Is it the living souls of trees that from their boles are drawn, or spectres dread of forest monarchs dead that silently return their ancient realms to prowl? To the gesturing fern, the flight of the pheasant I arouse, to the quiet of my feet, to the murmuring infinite of the silence, to the far gulfs, where star succeeds to star, that leaves of whispering boughs in countless myriads beat, to the full moon's frigid ball whence a mute wind doth lull the great frost, suddenly between dark branches ta'en, like quicksilver my soul divides itself tonight only immediately to recombine again! Do I give this soul of mine to sorrows or to joys? I shrink from every noise. What may the next one prove? And this shrinking dread I love and this lurking noise I fear. Would I wish to perish here? Or, hidden, there to live? That which grips me, to caress, then, like a rapier-stroke, through soul and body goes, is all this: joys or griefs? 'Tis the odour of the moss, and of the forest leaves, pierced by the scent of smoke from distant villages! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...BIRD AND BROOK by WILLIAM HENRY DAVIES A TRAMPWOMAN'S TRAGEDY by THOMAS HARDY PRAYER IN THE TRENCHES by BRENT DOW ALLINSON TO A REPUBLICAN FRIEND, 1848, CONTINUED by MATTHEW ARNOLD DESCRIBES THE PLACE WHERE CYNTHIA IS SPORTING HERSELF by PHILIP AYRES |