Page:Foliage, various poems.djvu/61

 And hear more birds than people talk;

I hear the birds that sing unseen,

On boughs now smothered with leaves green;

I sit and watch the swallows there,

Making a circus in the air;

That speed around straight-going crow,

As sharks around a ship can go;

I hear the skylark out of sight,

Hid perfectly in all this light.

The dappled cows in fields I pass,

Up to their bosoms in deep grass;

Old oak trees, with their bowels gone,

I see with spring's green finery on.

I watch the buzzing bees for hours,

To see them rush at laughing flowers—

And butterflies that lie so still.

I see great houses on the hill,

With shining roofs; and there shines one,

It seems that heaven has dropped the sun.

I see yon cloudlet sail the skies,

Racing with clouds ten times its size.

I walk green pathways, where love waits

To talk in whispers at old gates;

Past stiles—on which I lean, alone—

Carved with the names of lovers gone;

I stand on arches whose dark stones

Can turn the wind's soft sighs to groans.