Hist! there’s a stir in the brush. 
Was it a face through the leaves? 
Back of the laurels a skurry and rush
Hillward, then silence except for the thrush
That throws one song from the dark of the bush
And is gone; and I plunge in the wood, and the swift soul cleaves
Through the swirl and the flow of the leaves,
As a swimmer stands with his white limbs bare to the sun
For the space that a breath is held, and drops in the sea;
And the undulant woodland folds round me, intimate, fluctuant, free,
Like the clasp and the cling of waters,
          and the reach and the effort is done,—­
There is only the glory of living, exultant to be.

O goodly damp smell of the ground! 
O rough sweet bark of the trees! 
O clear sharp cracklings of sound! 
O life that’s a-thrill and a-bound
With the vigor of boyhood and morning, and the noontide’s rapture of ease! 
Was there ever a weary heart in the world? 
A lag in the body’s urge or a flag of the spirit’s wings? 
Did a man’s heart ever break
For a lost hope’s sake? 
For here there is lilt in the quiet and calm in the quiver of things. 
Ay, this old oak, gray-grown and knurled,
Solemn and sturdy and big,
Is as young of heart, as alert and elate in his rest,
As the nuthatch there that clings to the tip of the twig
And scolds at the wind that it buffets too rudely its nest.

Oh, what is it breathes in the air? 
Oh, what is it touches my cheek? 
There’s a sense of a presence that lurks in the branches. 
But where? 
Is it far, is it far to seek?

A ROVER’S SONG.

Snowdrift of the mountains,
Spindrift of the sea,
We who down the border
Rove from gloom to glee,—­

Snowdrift of the mountains,
Spindrift of the sea,
There be no such gypsies
Over earth as we.

Snowdrift of the mountains,
Spindrift of the sea,
Let us part the treasure
Of the world in three.

Snowdrift of the mountains,
Spindrift of the sea,
You shall keep your kingdoms;
Joscelyn for me!

DOWN THE SONGO.

I.

Floating! 
Floating—­and all the stillness waits
And listens at the ivory gates,
Full of a dim uncertain presage
Of some strange, undelivered message. 
There is no sound save from the bush
The alto of the shy wood-thrush,
And ever and anon the dip
Of a lazy oar.

The rhythmic drowsiness keeps time
To hazy subtleties of rhyme
That seem to slip
Through the lulled soul to seek the sleepy shore. 
The idle clouds go floating by;
Above us sky, beneath us sky;
The sun shines on us as we lie
Floating.