Classic Poem

To lie upon the grass and watch the herds
Deep standing in the river, and to see
The barred gold glisten on the bumble-bee
And note the noisy gossip of the birds;
To mark the blue horizon-rim that girds
That purple world beyond, Infinity —
Under the shade of a wild-cherry tree
To wait and listen, hampered not by words.

This was our gladness on a long June day
Companioned by the lazy lapse of hours,
While ebbed the slow, enchanted time away
Where bird-songs came, like intermittent showers,
And drowsy sweet upon us where we lay,
The perfume of the elderberry flowers.