Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18.djvu/330

322 And noon is hot, and barn-roofs gleam

White in the pale-blue distance,

I hear the saucy minstrels still

In chattering persistence.

When Eve her domes of opal fire

Piles round the blue horizon,

Or thunder rolls from hill to hill

A Kyrie Eleison,—

Still, merriest of the merry birds,

Your sparkle is unfading,—

Pied harlequins of June, no end

Of song and masquerading.

What cadences of bubbling mirth

Too quick for bar or rhythm!

What ecstasies, too full to keep

Coherent measure with them!

O could I share, without champagne

Or muscadel, your frolic,

The glad delirium of your joy,

Your fun un-apostolic,

Your drunken jargon through the fields,

Your bobolinkish gabble,

Your fine anacreontic glee,

Your tipsy reveller's babble!

Nay,—let me not profane such joy

With similes of folly,—

No wine of earth could waken songs

So delicately jolly!

O boundless self-contentment, voiced

In flying air-born bubbles!

O joy that mocks our sad unrest,

And drowns our earth-born troubles!

Hope springs with you: I dread no more

Despondency and dullness;

For Good Supreme can never fail

That gives such perfect fullness.

The Life that floods the happy fields

With song and light and color

Will shape our lives to richer states,

And heap our measures fuller.