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XXVI.

As I entered, mosses hushing
Stole all noises from my foot;
And a green elastic cushion,

Clasped within the linden's root,

Took me in a chair of silence very rare and absolute.

XXVII.

All the floor was paved with glory,

Greenly, silently inlaid

(Through quick motions made before me)

With fair counterparts in shade

Of the fair serrated ivy-leaves which slanted overhead.

XXVIII.

'Is such pavement in a palace ?'
So I questioned in my thought:

The sun, shining through the chalice

Of the red rose hung without,

Threw within a red libation, like an answer to my

doubt.

XXIX.

At the same time, on the linen

Of my childish lap there fell

Two white may-leaves, downward winning

Through the ceiling's miracle,

From a blossom, like an angel, out of sight yet blessing well.

XXX.

Down to floor and up to ceiling

Quick I turned my childish face,
With an innocent appealing

For the secret of the place

To the trees, which surely knew it in partaking of the

grace.

XXXI.

Where's no foot of human creature
How could reach a human hand?

And if this be work of nature,

Why has nature turned so bland,

Breaking off from other wild-work? It was hard to

understand.

XXXII.

Was she weary of rough-doing,
Of the bramble and the thorn?

Did she pause in tender rueing
Here of all her sylvan scorn?

Or in mock of art's deceiving was the sudden mildness worn?

XXXIII.

Or could this same bower (I fancied)

Be the work of Dryad strong,

Who, surviving all that chancëd

In the world's old pagan wrong,

Lay hid, feeding in the woodland on the last true poet's

song?

XXXIV.

Or was this the house of fairies,
Left, because of the rough ways,
Unassoiled by Ave Marys

Which the passing pilgrim prays,

And beyond St. Catherine's chiming on the blessed

Sabbath days?

XXXV.

So, young muser, I sate listening

To my fancy's wildest word:

On a sudden, through the glistening

Leaves around, a little stirred,

Came a sound, a sense of music which was rather felt

than heard.

XXXVI.

Softly, finely, it inwound me;
From the world it shut me in,—

Like a fountain, falling round me,

Which with silver waters thin

Clips a little water Naiad sitting smilingly within.

XXXVII.

Whence the music came, who knoweth?

I know nothing: but indeed

Pan or Faunus never bloweth

So much sweetness from a reed

Which has sucked the milk of waters at the oldest

riverhead.

XXXVIII.

Never lark the sun can waken

With such sweetness! when the lark,

The high planets overtaking

In the half-evanished Dark,

Casts his singing to their singing, like an arrow to the mark.

XXXIX.

Never nightingale so singeth:

Oh, she leans on thorny tree
And her poet-song she flingeth

Over pain to victory!

Yet she never sings such music, or she sings it not to me.

XL.

Never blackbirds, never thrushes
Nor small finches sing as sweet,

When the sun strikes through the bushes

To their crimson clinging feet,

And their pretty eyes look sideways to the summer heavens complete.

XLI.

If it were a bird, it seemed

Most like Chaucer's, which, in sooth,

He of green and azure dreamëd,

While it sate in spirit-ruth

On that bier of a crowned lady, singing nigh her silent

mouth.

XLII.

If it were a bird ?—ah, sceptic,

Give me yea' or give me 'nay '—
Though my soul were nympholeptic

As I heard that virëlay,

You may stoop your pride to pardon, for my sin is far away!

XLIII.

I rose up in exaltation

And an inward trembling heat,

And (it seemed) in geste of passion

Dropped the music to my feet

Like a garment rustling downwards-such a silence followed it!

XLIV.

Heart and head beat through the quiet

Full and heavily, though slower:

In the song, I think, and by it,

Mystic Presences of power

Had up-snatched me to the Timeless, then returned me to the Hour.

XLV

In a child-abstraction lifted,
Straightway from the bower I past,

Foot and soul being dimly drifted

Through the greenwood, till, at last,

In the hill-top's open sunshine I all consciously was

cast.

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