Classic Poem

Walls of green where the wind and the sunlight stir,
Rippling windows of light where the sun looks through,
And spaces of day that widen and blur beyond,
Out to the haze-rimmed, purpled edge of the world.

Aisles whose pavements are etched with ghosts of moving
Leaves and phantom branches raftered above;
Wind-swayed arches rocking under the blue,
Breathing under the dim, stirred peace of the world.

Walls of green skirting the high-built heaven,
Dusky pines, poplars clapping their hands,
Arching elms holding the spaces aloft,
Under the wind-swept, argosied dome of sky.

Walls of green. Under their luminous glooms,
Dim and sweet, the fancies of summer lie,
Sylvan murmurs of sun and leafy shadow,
Music of bird and swaying of tenuous bough.

Under here the haunted heart of summer
Hides in its pensive veilings of tremulous green,
Where the sky peers through and the ruddy eye of the sun,
Letting the world, remote, and its roar go by.

Here is the realm of fancy, the poet's land,
This house of breathing leaves and summer and sun;
Where the eye is keen for beauty, the ear intuned,
And the hushed heart glad for silence and slumber and dreams.

And here, chance now and anon when the world is stilled,
And life is afar, and earth of her care swept clean,
Do the gods come back as of old in the gold of the world,
And the elfin creatures dance in their sunbeam dreams:

And the high thoughts wake, and the great ones tread as of yore,
In olden majesty under these lofty aisles,
Where the woodshade glooms, or the gossamer sunlight smiles,
In the strength of the trees or the wide, blue lift of the sky.

Yea, here they come to the children of earth as of yore,
Bringing their god-gifts, vision and beauty and lore,
Brimming the world with the old-time effort and joy,
And Titan moods of the old world's golden desire.