ries; these
Dreamily I climbed for while
You still questioned with a smile,
And still tried to tease.

Ah, love, just two years have gone
Since then. I remember, you
Wore a dress of billowy blue
Muslin, or of lawn.

And that apron still I see,--
White, with cherry-juice red-stained,--
Which you held; wherein I rained
Ripeness from the tree.

And I asked you--for, you know,
To my eyes your serious eyes
Spoke such sweet philosophies,--
If you'd read Rousseau.

You remember how a chance,
Somewhat like to mine, one June
Happened him at castle Toune,
Over there in France?

And a cherry dropping fair
On your cheek I, envying it,
Said--remembering Rousseau's wit--
"Would my lips were there!"

How you laughed and blushed, I know.--
Here's the stream. The west has narrowed
To a streak of gold, deep arrowed.--
There's a skiff. Let's row.

4

_Entering the skiff, she speaks:_

Waters, flowing dark and bright
In the sunlight or the moon,
Seize my soul with such delight
As a visible music might;
As some slow, majestic tune
Made material to the sight.

Blossoms colored like the skies,
Sunset-hued and tame or wild,
Fill my soul with such surmise
As the mind might realize
If our thoughts, all undefiled,
Should take form before our eyes.

So to me do these appeal;
So they sway me every hour:
Letting all their beauty steal
On my soul to make it feel,
Through a rivulet or flower,
More than any words reveal.

5

_He speaks, rowing._

See, sweetheart, how the lilies lay
Their lambent leaves about our way;
Or, pollen-dusty, nod and float
Their moon-like flowers around our boat.--
The middle of the stream we've reached
Three strokes from where our boat was beached.

Look up. You scarce can see the sky,
Through trees that lean, dark, deep, and high;
And coiled with grape and trailing vine
Build a vast roof of shade and shine;
A house of leaves, where shadows walk,
And whispering winds and waters talk.

There is no path. The saplings choke
The trunks they spring from. There an oak
Lies rotting; and that sycamore,
Which lays its bulk from shore to shore,--
Uprooted by the floods,--perchance,
May be the bridge to some romance.

Now opening through a willow fringe
The waters creep, one tawny tinge
Of sunset; and on either mar