Classic Poem

Under old boughs, where moist the livelong summer
The moss is green, and springy to your tread,
When you, my friend, shall be an often comer
To pierce the thicket, seeking for my bed:

For thickets heavy all around should screen it
From careless gazer that might wander near,
Nor even to him who by some chance had seen it,
Would I have aught to catch his eye, appear:

One lonely stem—a trunk those old boughs lifting,
Should mark the spot; and, haply, new thrift owe
To that which upward through its sap was drifting
From what lay mouldering round its roots below.

There my freed spirit with the dawn's first gleaming
Would come to revel round the dancing spray;
There would it linger with the day's last beaming,
To watch thy footsteps thither track their way.

The quivering leaf should whisper in that hour
Things that for thee alone would have a sound,
And parting boughs my spirit-glances shower
In gleams of light upon the mossy ground.

There, when long years and all thy journeyings over—
Loosed from this world thyself to join the free,
Thou too wouldst come to rest beside thy lover
In that sweet cell beneath our Trysting-Tree.