sh and her hands again!

When fields smell moist with the dewy hay,
And woods are cool and wan,
And a path for dreams is the Milky-way,
And summer is nearly gone--
It's--Oh, for the rock and the woodland lane
And the silence and stars and her lips again!

When the weight of the apples breaks down the boughs,
And musk-melons split with sweet,
And the moon is a-bloom in the Heaven's house,
And summer has spent its heat--
It's--Oh, for the lane, the trysting lane,
And the deep-mooned night and her love again!

A FOREST IDYL

I

Beneath an old beech-tree
They sat together,
Fair as a flower was she
Of summer weather.
They spoke of life and love,
While, through the boughs above,
The sunlight, like a dove,
Dropped many a feather.

II

And there the violet,
The bluet near it,
Made blurs of azure wet--
As if some spirit,
Or woodland dream, had gone
Sprinkling the earth with dawn,
When only Fay and Faun
Could see or hear it.

III

She with her young, sweet face
And eyes gray-beaming,
Made of that forest place
A spot for dreaming:
A spot for Oreads
To smooth their nut-brown braids,
For Dryads of the glades
To dance in, gleaming.

IV

So dim the place, so blest.
One had not wondered
Had Dian's mooned breast
The deep leaves sundered,
And there on them awhile
The goddess deigned to smile.
While down some forest aisle
The far hunt thundered.

V

I deem that hour perchance
Was but a mirror
To show them Earth's romance
And draw them nearer:
A mirror where, meseems.
All that this Earth-life dreams,
All loveliness that gleams,
Their souls saw clearer.

VI

Beneath an old beech-tree
They dreamed of blisses;
Fair as a flower was she
That summer kisses:
They spoke of dreams and days,
Of love that goes and stays,
Of all for which life prays,
Ah me! and misses.

UNDER THE ROSE

He told a story to her,
A story old yet new--
And was it of the Faery Folk
That dance along the dew?

The night was hung with silence
As a room is hung with cloth,
And soundless, through the rose-sweet hush,
Swooned dim the down-white moth.

Along the east a shimmer,
A tenuous breath of flame,
From which, as from a bath of light,
Nymph-like, the girl-moon came.