GIVE o'er the strife! The poet cries
The maiden mercy, in whose eyes
He sees the light of paradise.

Beyond the coppice, at the edge
Where ends the poet's Privilege
Along the lake, in June one day
I sat to meditate this lay;
Wherein, forgetting Love, I planned
To sing the sea and sky and land.
And first, the picture — all the scene
A dark uninterrupted green.
No flower uplifted from the floor
Breaks from the forest to the shore.

No daffodil that nods along
The bloss'my banks of English song;
Myrtles nor roses, that entwine
In many a fragrant Attic line,
Here spring, to aid while I rehearse
The homely numbers of my verse.
Poppy nor violet is here,
Where fern, with cornel and severe
Bay, and the low-set laurel shine
Beneath a sombre front of pine.
Here as I lay among the brakes
I watched the bright, green forest-snakes,
The wasp go over, and the toad
Sit undecided of his road;
And sudden, from a tufted top,
The gray, silk-cinctured spider drop.
Out of the high, benignant blue
The earth a golden opiate drew.
Low-lying, level waves of heat
Along the glassèd waters beat.
Each ashen stem and each green leaf
Lay sunned asleep; and every sheaf
Of needles, glittering on the pines,
Inwove the light in glancing lines,
Until I too had slept, ere this,
But for the chimes I would not miss.

What sound was there? A chipping bird
That idly in the bushes stirred;
A locust droning in the brake;
The hum the darting midges make.
What sound was there? A sudden wind
That caught the ripples from behind
And kissed them as they ran; that drave
The whispering rout within the cave
In rocks below me where I lay.
You would have said 't was elves at play,
With muffled hammers keeping time
Beneath the wave in some cool chime
On amber bells, — k-link, k-lunk,
(With quiet joy the sound I drunk),
K-link, k-lunk! Now high, now low,
The chimes came bubbling from below.
If I could get into my rhymes
The lapping music of the chimes,
All men who read would run once more
To hear the ripples on the shore.
Then, as the last light wave of air
Drew off in ebb and failure there,
Fell back, and faintly, far away,
Broke in the pines across the bay,
Low on the fall and silence crept
A sudden sound, then sank and slept.
Again, in pulse and faint, awoke
In matted leaves of pine and oak,
Where through the jungle of the grass
The armies of the emmets pass.

Then on that cess and failure came,
As from a crypt and smothered flame,
An incense, on the fall and swell
Of every piny thurible.
No scent of rose or spices rare
Perfumed the quiet courses there;
No scattered homely mint and thyme
Wove in the sun an odorous rhyme;
But June upon the air abroad
Summoned the soul of leaf and sod,
Shot with the glamour, and divine
With the o'er-mastering scent of pine.

Ah Summer, Summer! Fragrant June,
Sweet as a moth from the cocoon!
My thoughts in winter come and go
As aimless as the errant snow;
Or lie, by wind and weather pressed,
A dumb conservator at best.
But April comes, and to the plain
They fall and labor with the rain;
Sing as they fall and fallen, jet
Their life into the violet;
And measure, in this homely rune,
The drowsy summer-song of June.

This was the picture; this the green
And golden magic of the scene;
The lapping music, and the boon
Delight of lotos-drowsy June,
Ungraced and unadorned. Was heard
No mellow-ringing song of bird;
No grace of woven grasses spread,
With white and purple diapred
Of blooms, to strike and snare the sense
With jets of odorous frankincense.
But peaceful as I lay and took
These fancies down, (to make my book),
Out of the lake, in spite of me,
She rose, Anadyomene!

Give o'er the strife! The poet cries
The maiden mercy, in whose eyes
He sees the light of paradise.
She came, and shot through that dull clime
Sharp scent of marjoram and thyme,
Cool vervain, and the forest rang
Quick with the song my own heart sang.
She came, with love, and in one ray
Redeemed the dulness of the day,
Until the world, (sea, sky, and land),
Lay in the hollow of her hand.