Summer Clouds and a Swan

Now in late Summer massy foliage
Shows dark and heavy, and the beechmast browns
Yon lofty beeches of the smooth grey bole.
That stand upon a mossy turf which seems
To undulate as if with languid airs
Breathing beneath the glowing tapestry'
Of moss now vivid now a sombre green.
The bank insensibly to water slopes,
A narrow tract of water with the banks
In easy hail of one another : I stand
Facing the grove beyond the narrow water
Nestled in lime-leaves murmurous with bees :
The water from my vantage-ground appears
A gleaming mirror for the banks and sky.
Ah ! what a sky ! in yonder hazy blue
Floats a white cloudlet shading into grey,
A drift of white soft-outlined bright and pure,
Letting the eye sink in luxuriously,
Dusking to fringe of delicate slate-grey
Most like a wing of blue-backed herring-gull
Dishevelled ruffled all the downy rim,
Silverly saturate and soaked with light,
Tranquilly floating in a blue profound.
Shored is yon skiey wash of paly blue
With fainter snow of vapours hazed from heat,
Subsiding dim with graduation fine
In that sky-water, as a mellow stroke
From some great bell to silence ebbs away,
Faints off, dissolves, and fails insensibly —
Their billowy bulky mass of mountain soiled
As with a tinge of copper and of brass ;
Their mounded subsidences here and there
Worn smooth with long abrasion of rich light
In streaming over, beams dissolved imbibed
In part while flowing, but in part flung free.
Swimming in shafts of pearl incumbent long
Upon the opalescent shadowy air.
Haunt of still angels floating restfully
Bound earthward upon ministries of love.

See yonder, mottled all the space with fleece
Or curdling milk or feather balls most fair.
Between them gulfs and channels of dim blue
Like sunny Alpine ice thin-oversnowed.
Some lawny mists move flimsy, letting filter
Blue heaven through them, even as shredding foam
Wears airy grey bewraying a blue billow :
These radiate to nigh impalpable
Fan-rays long film-blown, fingered luminous
Of amorous air soft frolicsome and warm.

Lo ' there hath grown a fibrous length of mist,
A delicate stalk fainl-fuming into wealth
Of leafage, blossoming indefinite;
A spine aerial radiating fine ;
Lucent plant-animal that loves the sea.
Expatiating still luxuriously
In the blue bath v\ iih feelers all abroad.
Glad unsuspicious free unreticent —
Long-reaching veinings in the gauzelike haze
Tenderly marbling the cerulean,
Now dense now rare like lawn we steep in water.

How prodigal of lovely wayward change
Is cloudland subtle, silent, unaware,
Ravelling, unravelling tissues gossamer,
Not to be prisoned in colour or in word,
Pageant regarding not if any see !

Light of a stilly summer afternoon
Drowsy, voluptuous and sumptuous,
Rich, honey-heavy, sheeny, breathing balm !

Yon beech-grove rises dark against the light,
And o'er the beech-grove higher up the light
Climbs a tall hoary lanthorn-tower and spire;
The light all tender with a pearly haze
Ilued like thin fins and flanking of a fish
Fresh-netted live and shining with the wet —
While all the scene repeated lies below,
The tract of blue, the cloud wing floating there,
The faint snow shores, the finlike opal light,
And in it the beech-groves and loftier tower,
With through its belfry windows mullioned
The warm light glowing as in human eyes.

Now in the lower reflected gulf of blue
A swan sails tranquil with a stately neck
Arched long, with orange beak, and lifted wing
Sail-like on either side, how soft and pure !
Have they not fallen these wings from yonder blue,
Out of the soft white cloud there, so akin
They seem to it ! And O ihe tenderness
Of the blue shadow, scarcely shadow or blue,
Haunting yon dells of down behind the wing !
Surely the white cloud when it fell from heaven
Fell with the heavenly motion lingering in it,
For do but note how tranquil and how still
The cloud sails yonder and the swan sails here !
Yet lo ! a sudden impulse of the bosom
Thrills all the placid water feeling it
To dimpling smiles that waft luxurious light
Into the pendulous faces of sweet flowers,
Lush grasses, harebell, eyebright, sorrel leaves
That fringe the flood whose heart enshrines them all.
While his dim double the swan floats upon
Flickers beneath him with the twin-born ripple
From his breast sloping either side away.
Melts like snow dropped in water, yet remains.
He ruffles yielding wavering images
Of church and tree, and of the sky above.
But all the fragments gather as he goes.
Thus if a dream, a passing fancy, glide
And mar thine image for a moment. Love,
Within my heart, it glides and passes by ;
But thou art, Love, mine own abiding sky,
More undisturbed not faithfuller than I.