O the blue butterflies quivering there,
Hovering, flickering, never at rest,
Quickened flecks of the upper air
Brought down by seeing the earth so blest;
And the grasshoppers shrilling their quaint delight
At having been born in a world so bright!
Overhead circles the lapwing slow,
Waving his black-tipped curves of wings,
Calling so clearly that I, as I go,
Call back an answering "Peewit," that brings
The sweep of his circles so low as he flies
That I see his green plume, and the doubt in his eyes.
Harebell and crowfoot and bracken and ling
Gladden my heart as it beats all aglow
In a brotherhood true with each living thing,
From the crimson-tipped bee, and the chaffer slow,
And the small lithe lizard, with jewelled eye,
To the lark that has lost herself far in the sky.
Ay me, where am I? for here I sit
With bricks all round me, bilious and brown;
And not a chance this summer to quit
The bustle and roar and the cries of town,
Nor to cease to breathe this over-breathed air,
Heavy with toil and bitter with care.
Well, - face it and chase it, this vain regret;
Which would I choose, to see my moor
With eyes such as many that I have met,
Which see and are blind, which all wealth leaves poor,
Or to sit, brick-prisoned, but free within,
Freeborn by a charter no gold can win?
When my turn came, the poem I wrote, which duly appeared, was, like my
friend's Moor, a recollected emotion, a mental experience
relived. Mine was in the New Forest; when walking there on day, the
loveliness of that green leafy world, its silence and its melody and
the divine sunlight, so wrought on me that for a few precious moments
it produced a mystical state, that rare condition of beautiful
illusions when the feet are off the ground, when, on some occasions, we
appear to be one with nature, unbodied like the poet's bird, floating,
diffused in it. There are also other occasions when this transfigured
aspect of nature produces the idea that we are in communion with or in
the presence of unearthly entities.
THE VISIONARY
I
It must be true, I've somtimes thought,
That beings from some realm afar
Oft wander in the void immense,
Flying from star to star.
In silence through this various world,
They pass, to mortal eyes unseen,
And toiling men in towns know not
That one with them has been.
But oft, when on the woodland falls
A sudden hush, and no bird sings;
When leaves, scarce fluttered by the wind,
Speak low of sacred things,
My heart has told me I should know,
In such a lonely place, if one
From other worlds came there and stood
Between me and the sun.
