Classic Poem

This cool and glooming summer wood
Is wise and silent in its mood,

Forever moving in its dream
Of breathing leaf and sunny gleam.

Whatever voice within is heard,
Of stir of leaf or whir of bird;

Without, its trance is ever one
Of breathing sleeping shade and sun.

The gleaming gold of summer fields
Dreams through its green of leafy shields,

And windows of the shining wind,
With grey trunks looming dim behind,

Grotesque and ancient; all their peace
The dreams of gods of olden Greece;—

As though in ages long ago,
Before their dreams began to grow,

Some startled, fleeing dryad hid
Within this leafy coverlid,

Enmeshed her silvern reveries here,
And filled its shadows with her fear,

And all the woodland mind inwrought
With golden filagree of thought

And maiden fancies, pensive spun,
From purpled skeinings of the sun,

Woven on sunbeam-shuttled looms,
Dim, luminous, of these leafy rooms.