In wild meanderings o'er pasture wealth--
Erratic wanderings through dead'ning-lands,
Where sly old brambles, plucking me by stealth,
Put berries in my hands:
Or the path climbs a bowlder--wades a slough--
Or, rollicking through buttercups and flags,
Goes gayly dancing o'er a deep bayou
On old tree-trunks and snags:
Or, at the creek, leads o'er a limpid pool
Upon a bridge the stream itself has made,
With some Spring-freshet for the mighty tool
That its foundation laid.
I pause a moment here to bend and muse,
With dreamy eyes, on my reflection, where
A boat-backed bug drifts on a helpless cruise,
Or wildly oars the air,
As, dimly seen, the pirate of the brook--
The pike, whose jaunty hulk denotes his speed--
Swings pivoting about, with wary look
Of low and cunning greed.
Till, filled with other thought, I turn again
To where the pathway enters in a realm
Of lordly woodland, under sovereign reign
Of towering oak and elm.
A puritanic quiet here reviles
The almost whispered warble from the hedge.
And takes a locust's rasping voice and files
The silence to an edge.
In such a solitude my sombre way
Strays like a misanthrope within a gloom
Of his own shadows--till the perfect day
Bursts into sudden bloom,
And crowns a long, declining stretch of space,
Where King Corn's armies lie with flags unfurled.
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