Page:The Romance of Nature; or, The Flower-Seasons Illustrated.djvu/144

86 It is a fanciful imagining,

To blend aught sad or sorrowful with one

Who thus triumphantly doth round her fling,

Far in the silent night, her wondrous spell;

Reigning in air, upon her viewless throne,

The sovereign queen of else subdued sound.

The very leaves hang moveless—the small bell

Of many a river flow'ret, that all day,

Rang with the music of the busy bee,

And danced, delighting in the sunshine gay,

Now stilly hangs, as if attentively

It listened to the night-bird's music sweet.

Over the stream,

Where drooping willow-leaves the waters meet,

The moonbeams gleam,

Broadly and calmly, in a radiant sheet

Of lustre bright,

Which e'en the pinion of the smallest breeze,

With winnow light,

May break to shining fragments. The huge trees,

Bending their stately heads the river by,

Are mirrored in it, as majestical

As they now stand; while on each leaf-crest high

The lady moon has placed a coronal

Of her encrowning light. Now, over all

The slumbering vale she holds her silent reign,

Empress of sight, as the night-bird of sound,