A Day for Wandering

I SET apart a day for wandering;

I heard the woodlands ring,

The hidden white-throat sing,

And the harmonic West,

Beyond a far hill-crest,

Touch its Aeolian string.

Remote from all the brawl and bruit of men,

The iron tongue of Trade,

I followed the clear calling of a wren

Deep to the bosom of a sheltered glade,

Where interwoven branches spread a shade

Of soft cool beryl like the evening seas

Unruffled by the breeze.

And there—and there—

I watched the maiden-hair,

The pale blue iris-grass,

The water-spider in its pause and pass

Upon a pool that like a mirror was.

I took for confidant

The diligent ant

Threading the clover and the sorrel aisles;

For me were all the smiles

Of the sequestered blossoms there abloom—

Chalice and crown and plume;

I drank the ripe rich attars blurred and blent,

And won—Content!