Classic Poem

Rarest mood of all the year!
Aimless, idle, and content—
Sky and wave and atmosphere
Wholly indolent.

Little daughter, loose the band
From your tresses—let them pour
Shadow-like o'er arm and hand
Idling at the oar.

Low and clear, and pure and deep,
Ripples of the river sing—
Water-lilies, half asleep,
Drowsed with listening:

Tremulous reflex of skies—
Skies above and skies below,—
Paradise and Paradise
Blending even so!

Blossoms with their leaves unrolled
Laughingly, as they were lips
Cleft with ruddy beaten gold
Tongues of pollen-tips.

Rush and reed, and thorn and vine,
Clumped with grasses lithe and tall—
With a web of summer-shine
Woven round it all.

Back and forth, and to and fro—
Flashing scale and wing as one,—
Dragon-flies that come and go,
Shuttled by the sun.

Fairy lilts and lullabies,
Fine as fantasy conceives,—
Echoes wrought of cricket-cries
Sifted through the leaves.

O'er the rose, with drowsy buzz,
Hangs the bee, and stays his kiss,
Even as my fancy does,
Gipsy, over this.

Let us both be children—share
Youth's glad voyage night and day,
Drift adown it, half aware,
Anywhere we may.—

Drift and curve and deviate,
Veer and eddy, float and flow,
Waver, swerve and undulate,
As the bubbles go.