Classic Poem

A SPIRIT of one rare mood, of one high dream,
She stands with finger on lip in this great hush
Of distant hill and wood and field and stream,
As one who harkens to the hermit thrush
By some grave gateway, large, of evening dream;

And harkening, lingers, hearing in the sound
The beauty and grief of all the great dead years;
So hushed and rapt is all the world around
In that sweet sadness too remote for tears,
But felt in all this beauty of summer swound.

Far out, earth's mighty waters, down the day
Are strung to mystic cadence; dim, removed
The wind's low litanies; and far away
The softest sounds of summer, mute, reproved
By this rare silence of the enraptured day.

Only the inward breathings of the leaves
In woodlands; sigh of subtlest summer sleep;
That magic charm which earth's high dream achieves,
As those great eyes in mystic trance drink deep,
And that great breast alternate joys and grieves.