gold,
  Scattered cloud-banners, crimson, gray, and white. 
  There was my shadow in the leafy path
  Alone,—­none was to keep the tryst with me! 
  No voice, no step among the hills I heard. 
  The joyous swallows from their nestlings flew,
  Mad in the light with song.  Far out at sea
  The white sails fluttered in the eager breeze,
  But Day was silent holding tryst with me,—­
  My pilgrimage rewarded—­faith restored.

NO ANSWER.

  You tell me not, green multitude of leaves,
  Mingling and whirling with the willful breeze,
  Nor you, bright grasses, trembling blade to blade,
    What meaneth June, to hap us every year?

  The spirit of the flowers is watching now,
  As winking in the sun they suck the dew,
  The thickets parley with the splendid fields—­
    What meaneth June, to hap us every year?

  Up where the brook laps round the shining flags,
  And tinkling foam bells pass the weedy shore,
  And where the willow swings above the trout—­
    What meaneth June, to hap us every year?

  The clouds hold knowledge in their snowy peaks,
  They hide it in their moving fleecy folds,
  They share it with the sunset’s golden isles—­
    What meaneth June, to hap us every year?

  Fullness and sweetness, and the power of life,
  Must I in ignorance remain alone,
  And yield the quest of speech for certain proof? 
    What meaneth June, to hap us every year?

  Sweetness and beauty, and the power of life,
  Is it creation’s anthem—­parts for all? 
  Is this the knowledge—­will you answer me
    What meaneth June, to hap us every year?

ON THE HILLTOP.

“By the margent of the sea
I would build myself a home.”

Not by the margent of the sea,
But on the hilltop I would be,
My little house a mossy den,
Between me and the world of men. 
Beside me dips a wide ravine,
Covered with a flowery screen;
Far round me rise a band of hills,
Whose voices reach me by their rills,
Or deep susurrus of the wood,
That stands in stately brotherhood,
Upholding one vast web of green,
Whereunder foot has never been—­
The pine and elm, the birch and oak—­
And thus their voices me invoke: 
“If you would on the hilltop be,
We cannot share your misery;
Cease, cease this moaning for the Past: 
The law of grief can never last.” 
When springtime brings anemones,
Upon the sod I take my ease,
Or search for Arethusa’s pink,
Along the torrent’s ragged brink;
Or in the tinted April hours
I watch the curtain of the showers
That fall beneath a lurking cloud,
Which for a moment throws a shroud
On the sun’s arrows in the west,
Till it blaze up a golden crest. 
The young moon bends her crescent horn