Classic Poem

At the base of a marvelous mountain,
Whose hights human foot never trod,
There gushes a crystalline fountain
And makes a bright brook in the sod.

And the sod greens away o'er a valley
That opens where blue waters be;
And the brook with meandering dally
Goes babbling along to the sea.

There, snowy sails pass like the lazy
White clouds of a summer-blue sky —
Appear and evanish where hazy
Infinity fences the eye.

Here, asleep upon Pan's mossy pillows —
By Pan piped asleep in these groves, —
Dreaming Poesy hears the low billows
Breeze-babbled from echoing coves.

And here, while the leaves sift the sunny
Swift sands of the day from above,
The wild bee gads hunting for honey,
With wings wove of whispers of love.

Here the ripples make music like olden
Weird monotones thrummed on a lute;
Here the dark skies of green are starred golden
With thick constellations of fruit.

In this valley, alone but not lonely,
Beside where the brook-waters run,
Stands one little cottage, one only,
Dwells one little maid, only one.

Her blue eyes are clear pools of passion,
Her lips have the tremor of leaves,
And the speech that her loving thoughts fashion
Is sweeter than poetry weaves.

Flirtation, gross, flippant, and cruel,
Ne'er held in its tarnishing hold
The troth that in her is a jewel
For only love's setting of gold.

Though the vale is by sleep so surrounded
That her ne'er a wooer shall win,
On the side by the sea of dreams bounded
With her I sail out and sail in.