Pipe blown through by the warm wild | Motionless, with heaped canvas drooping breath of the West The winds into his pulses. Hush! 't is he! My oriole, my glance of summer fire, About the bough help his housekeep- Yet fearing me who laid it in his way, Nor, more than wiser we in our affairs, Divines the providence that hides and helps. Heave, ho! Heave, ho! he whistles as the twine Slackens its hold; once more, now! and a flash Lightens across the sunlight to the elm Where his mate dangles at her cup of | Their roots, like molten metal cooled in felt. Within his tent as if I were a bird, Eight balanced limbs, springing at once all round His deep-ridged trunk with upward slant diverse, In outline like enormous beaker, fit For hand of Jotun, where mid snow and mist He holds unwieldy revel. This tree, spared, I know not by what grace,- for in the blood Of our New World subduers lingers yet Hereditary feud with trees, they being (They and the red-man most) our fathers' foes, Is one of six, a willow Pleiades, The seventh fallen, that lean along the brink Where the steep upland dips into the marsh, flowing, Till it possessed me wholly, and thought ceased, Or was transfused in something to which thought Is coarse and dull of sense. Myself was lost, Gone from me like an ache, and what remained Became a part of the universal joy. My soul went forth, and, mingling with the tree, Danced in the leaves; or, floating in the cloud, Saw its white double in the stream below; Or else, sublimed to purer ecstasy, The tide that crept with coolness to its roots, The thin-winged swallow skating on the air; The life that gladdened everything was mine. |