Then the brow of the King swelled crimson

With a flush of angry scorn: "Well have ye spoken, my two eldest, And chosen as ye were born;

"But she like a thing of peasant race, That is happy binding the sheaves"; Then he saw her dead mother in her face,

And said, "Thou shalt have thy leaves."

II.

He mounted and rode three days and nights

Till he came to Vanity Fair, And 't was easy to buy the gems and the silk,

But no Singing Leaves were there.

Then deep in the greenwood rode he, And asked of every tree,

"O, if you have ever a Singing Leaf, I pray you give it me !"

But the trees all kept their counsel,
And never a word said they,
Only there sighed from the pine-tops
A music of seas far away.

Only the pattering aspen

Made a sound of growing rain, That fell ever faster and faster,

Then faltered to silence again.

"O, where shall I find a little foot-page That would win both hose and shoon, And will bring to me the Singing Leaves If they grow under the moon?"

Then lightly turned him Walter the page,

By the stirrup as he ran : "Now pledge ye me the truesome word Of a king and gentleman,

"That you will give me the first, first thing

You meet at your castle-gate, And the Princess shall get the Singing Leaves,

Or mine be a traitor's fate."

"Lo, here the Singing Leaves," quoth he,

"And woe, but they cost me dear!" She took the packet, and the smile Deepened down beneath the tear.

It deepened down till it reached her heart,

And then gushed up again,
And lighted her tears as the sudden sun
Transfigures the summer rain.

And the first Leaf, when it was opened,
Sang: "I am Walter the page,
And the songs I sing 'neath thy window
Are my only heritage."

And the second Leaf sang: "But in the land

That is neither on earth or sea, My lute and I are lords of more Than thrice this kingdom's fee."

And the third Leaf sang, "Be mine! Be mine!"

And ever it sang, "Be mine!" Then sweeter it sang and ever sweeter, And said, "I am thine, thine, thine!

At the first Leaf she grew pale enough,
At the second she turned aside,
At the third, 't was as if a lily flushed
With a rose's red heart's tide.

"Good counsel gave the bird," said she, "I have my hope thrice o'er,

Snap, chord of manhood's tenser
strain !

To-day I will be a boy again;
The mind's pursuing element,
Like a bow slackened and unbent,
In some dark corner shall be leant.
The robin sings, as of old, from the
limb!

The cat-bird croons in the lilac-bush! Through the dim arbor, himself more dim,

Silently hops the hermit-thrush,
The withered leaves keep dumb for him;
The irreverent buccaneering bee

Hath stormed and rifled the nunnery
Of the lily, and scattered the sacred floor
With haste-dropt gold from shrine to
door;
There, as of yore,

The rich, milk-tingeing buttercup
Its tiny polished urn holds up,
Filled with ripe summer to the edge,

The sun in his own wine to pledge;
And our tall elm, this hundredth year
Doge of our leafy Venice here,
Who, with an annual ring, doth wed
The blue Adriatic overhead,
Shadows with his palatial mass
The deep canals of flowing grass.

O unestranged birds and bees! O face of nature always true! O never-unsympathizing trees! O never-rejecting roof of blue, Whose rash disherison never falls On us unthinking prodigals, Yet who convictest all our ill, So grand and unappeasable! Methinks my heart from each of these Plucks part of childhood back again, Long there imprisoned, as the breeze Doth every hidden odor seize Of wood and water, hill and plain. Once more am I admitted peer In the upper house of Nature here, And feel through all my pulses run The royal blood of breeze and sun.

Upon these elm-arched solitudes No hum of neighbor toil intrudes; The only hammer that I hear Is wielded by the woodpecker, The single noisy calling his In all our leaf-hid Sybaris; The good old time, close-hidden here, Persists, a loyal cavalier,

While Roundheads prim, with point of fox,

Probe wainscot-chink and empty box;
Here no hoarse-voiced iconoclast
Insults thy statues, royal Past;
Myself too prone the axe to wield,
I touch the silver side of the shield
With lance reversed, and challenge
peace,

A willing convert of the trees.

How chanced it that so long I tost A cable's length from this rich coast, With foolish anchors hugging close The beckoning weeds and lazy ooze, Nor had the wit to wreck before On this enchanted island's shore, Whither the current of the sea, With wiser drift, persuaded me?

O, might we but of such rare days Build up the spirit's dwelling-place! A temple of so Parian stone Would brook a marble god alone, The statue of a perfect life, Far-shrined from earth's bestaining strife,

Alas! though such felicity

In our vext world here may not be,
Yet, as sometimes the peasant's hut
Shows stones which old religion cut
With text inspired, or mystic sign
Of the Eternal and Divine,
Torn from the consecration deep
Of some fallen nunnery's mossy sleep,
So, from the ruins of this day
Crumbling in golden dust away,
The soul one gracious block may draw,
Carved with some fragment of the law,
Which, set in life's uneven wall,
Old benedictions may recall,

And lure some nunlike thoughts to take
Their dwelling here for memory's sake.