Thou art to me like my beloved maiden,
So frankly coy, so full of trembly confidences;
Thy shadow scarce seems shade, thy pattering leaflets
Sprinkle their gathered sunshine o’er my senses,
And Nature gives me all her summer confidences.

Whether my heart with hope or sorrow tremble,
Thou sympathizest still; wild and unquiet,
I fling me down; thy ripple, like a river,
Flows valleyward, where calmness is, and by it
My heart is floated down into the land of quiet.

AN INTERVIEW WITH MILES STANDISH

I sat one evening in my room,
  In that sweet hour of twilight
When blended thoughts, half light, half gloom,
  Throng through the spirit’s skylight;
The flames by fits curled round the bars,
  Or up the chimney crinkled,
While embers dropped like falling stars,
  And in the ashes tinkled.

I sat, and mused; the fire burned low,
  And, o’er my senses stealing, 10
Crept something of the ruddy glow
  That bloomed on wall and ceiling;
My pictures (they are very few,
  The heads of ancient wise men)
Smoothed down their knotted fronts, and grew
  As rosy as excisemen.

My antique high-backed Spanish chair
  Felt thrills through wood and leather,
That had been strangers since whilere,
  Mid Andaluslan heather, 20
The oak that built its sturdy frame
  His happy arms stretched over
The ox whose fortunate hide became
  The bottom’s polished cover.

It came out in that famous bark,
  That brought our sires intrepid,
Capacious as another ark
  For furniture decrepit;
For, as that saved of bird and beast
  A pair for propagation, 30
So has the seed of these increased
  And furnished half the nation.

Kings sit, they say, in slippery seats;
  But those slant precipices
Of ice the northern voyager meets
  Less slippery are than this is;
To cling therein would pass the wit
  Of royal man or woman,
And whatsoe’er can stay in it
  Is more or less than human. 40

I offer to all bores this perch,
  Dear well-intentioned people
With heads as void as week-day church,
  Tongues longer than the steeple;
To folks with missions, whose gaunt eyes
  See golden ages rising,—­
Salt of the earth! in what queer Guys
  Thou’rt fond of crystallizing!

My wonder, then, was not unmixed
  With merciful suggestion, 50
When, as my roving eyes grew fixed
  Upon the chair in question,
I saw its trembling arms enclose
  A figure grim and rusty,
Whose doublet plain and plainer hose
  Were something worn and dusty.

Now even such men as Nature forms
  Merely to fill the street with,
Once turned to ghosts by hungry worms, 59
  Are serious things to meet with;
Your penitent spirits are no jokes,
  And, though I’m not averse to
A quiet shade, even they are folks
  One cares not to speak first to.