Solitude

O vale of visionary rest! —Hushed as the grave it lies With heaving banks of tenderest green Yet brightly, happily serene, As cloud-vale of the sleepy west Reposing on the skies. Its reigning spirit may not vary— What change can seasons bring Unto so sweet, so calm a spot, Where every loud and restless thing Is like a far-off dream forgot? Mild, gentle, mournful, solitary, As if it aye were spring, And Nature loved to witness here The still joys of the infant year, 'Mid flowers and music wandering glad, For ever happy, yet for ever sad. This little world how still and lone With that horizon of its own! And, when in silence falls the night, With its own moon how purely bright! No shepherd's cot is here—no shieling Its verdant roof through trees revealing— No branchy covert like a nest, Where the weary woodmen rest, And their jocund carols sing O'er the fallen forest-king. Inviolate by human hand The fragrant white-stemmed birch-trees stand, With many a green and sunny glade 'Mid their embowering murmurs made By gradual soft decay— Where stealing to that little lawn From secret haunt and half-afraid, The doe, in mute affection gay, At close of eve leads forth her fawn Amid the flowers to play. And in that dell's soft bosom, lo! Where smileth up a cheerful glow Of water pure as air, A tarn by two small streamlets spread In beauty o'er its waveless bed, Reflecting in that heaven so still The birch-grove mid-way up the hill, And summits green and bare. How lone! beneath its veil of dew That morning's rosy fingers drew, Seldom shepherd's foot hath prest One primrose in its sunny rest. The sheep at distance from the spring May here her lambkins chance to bring, Sporting with their shadows airy, Each like tiny Water-fairy Imaged in the lucid lake! The hive-bee here doth sometimes make Music, whose sweet murmurings tell Of his sheltered straw-roofed cell Standing 'mid some garden gay, Near a cottage far away. By the lake-side, on a stone Stands the heron all alone, Still as any lifeless thing! Slowly moves his laggard wing, And cloud-like floating with the gale Leaves at last the quiet vale.