To the Dove

1

Thy mellow passioning amid the leaves
Trembles around me in the summer dusk
That falls along the oatlands' sallow sheaves
And haunts above the runnel's voice a-husk
With plashy willow and bold-wading reed.
The solitude's dim spell it breaketh not,
But softer mourns unto me from the mead
Than airs within the dead primrose's heart,
Or breath of silences in dells begot
To soothe some grief-wan maid with love a-mort.

2

On many sylvan eves of childhood thou
Didst woo my homeward path with tenderness,
Woo till the awing owlet ceased to cow
With his chill screech of quavering distress.
At phantom midnight wakened I have heard
Thy mated dreams from the wind-eerie elm,
And as a potion medicined and myrrhed,
As an enchantment's runic utterance,
It would draw sleep back to her lulling realm
Over my lids till day should disentrance.

3

A priestess art thou of Simplicity,
Who hath one fane--the heaven above thy nest;
One incense--love; one stealing litany
Of peace from rivered vale and upland crest.
Yea, thou art Hers, who makes prayer of the breeze,
Hope of the cool upwelling from sweet soils,
Faith of the dark'ning distance, charities
Of vesper scents, and of the glow-worm's throb
Joy whose first leaping rends the care-wound coils
That would earth of its heavenliness rob.

4

But few, how few her worshippers! For we
Cast at a myriad shrines our souls, to rise
Beliefless, unanointed, bound not free,
To sacrificing a vain sacrifice!
Let thy lone innocence then quickly null
Within our veins doubt-led and wrong desire
Or drugging knowledge that but fills o'erfull
Of feverous mystery the days we drain!
Be thy warm notes like an Orphean lyre
To lead us to life's Arcady again!