On greenest grass the lace of lights
Beneath the shadowing tree
Trembles, as when eyes more than lips
Are smiling silently.

Its motion all but motionless
Is like a dancer's feet
Half--stirred, half--stilled, ere music throb
To float them on its beat.

Is it a music ears can hear?
Or in a world so jarred
With inward wrong, is it a sound
Too happy to be heard?

O tell me, tell me! Could I slip
The time's perversity,
There would be music in the air
And I that trembling tree.

A spirit smiling to itself
Seems in those leaves to live;
And for a moment, lost in it,
I can this world forgive.