XIX.

     Right loud the bugle’s hallali elate
     Rang forth of merry dingles round the tors;
     And deftest hand was he from foreign wars,
     But soon he hailed the home-bred yeoman mate.

     XX.

     Before the blackbird pecked the turf they woke;
     At dawn the deer’s wet nostrils blew their last. 
     To forest, haunt of runs and prime repast,
     With paying blows, the yokel strained his yoke.

     XXI.

     The city urchin mooned on forest air,
     On grassy sweeps and flying arrows, thick
     As swallows o’er smooth streams, and sighed him sick
     For thinking that his dearer home was there.

     XXII.

     Familiar, still unseized, the forest sprang
     An old-world echo, like no mortal thing. 
     The hunter’s horn might wind a jocund ring,
     But held in ear it had a chilly clang.

     XXIII.

     Some shadow lurked aloof of ancient time;
     Some warning haunted any sound prolonged,
     As though the leagues of woodland held them wronged
     To hear an axe and see a township climb.

     XXIV.

     The forest’s erewhile emperor at eve
     Had voice when lowered heavens drummed for gales. 
     At midnight a small people danced the dales,
     So thin that they might dwindle through a sieve

     XXV.

     Ringed mushrooms told of them, and in their throats,
     Old wives that gathered herbs and knew too much. 
     The pensioned forester beside his crutch,
     Struck showers from embers at those bodeful notes.

     XXVI.

     Came then the one, all ear, all eye, all heart;
     Devourer, and insensibly devoured;
     In whom the city over forest flowered,
     The forest wreathed the city’s drama-mart.

     XXVII.

     There found he in new form that Dragon old,
     From tangled solitudes expelled; and taught
     How blindly each its antidote besought;
     For either’s breath the needs of either told.

     XXVIII.

     Now deep in woods, with song no sermon’s drone,
     He showed what charm the human concourse works: 
     Amid the press of men, what virtue lurks
     Where bubble sacred wells of wildness lone.

     XXIX.

     Our conquest these:  if haply we retain
     The reverence that ne’er will overrun
     Due boundaries of realms from Nature won,
     Nor let the poet’s awe in rapture wane.

     Poem:  A Garden Idyl

     With sagest craft Arachne worked
     Her web, and at a corner lurked,
     Awaiting what should plump her soon,
     To case it in the death-cocoon. 
     Sagaciously her home she chose
     For visits that would never close;
     Inside my chalet-porch her feast
     Plucked all the winds but chill North-east.