WHEN I was young, we dwelt in a vale
    By a misty fen that rang all night,
    And thus it was the maidens pale
    I knew so well, whose garments trail
    Across the reeds to a window light.
    The fen had every kind of bloom,
    And for every kind there was a face,
    And a voice that has sounded in my room
    Across the sill from the outer gloom.
    Each came singly unto her place,
    But all came every night with the mist;
    And often they brought so much to say
    Of things of moment to which, they wist,
    One so lonely was fain to list,
    That the stars were almost faded away
    Before the last went, heavy with dew,
    Back to the place from which she came—
    Where the bird was before it flew,
    Where the flower was before it grew,
    Where bird and flower were one and the same.
    And thus it is I know so well
    Why the flower has odor, the bird has song.
    You have only to ask me, and I can tell.
    No, not vainly there did I dwell,
    Nor vainly listen all the night long.

    I HAD withdrawn in forest, and my song
    Was swallowed up in leaves that blew alway;
    And to the forest edge you came one day
    (This was my dream) and looked and pondered long,
    But did not enter, though the wish was strong:
    You shook your pensive head as who should say,
    'I dare not—too far in his footsteps stray—
    He must seek me would he undo the wrong.
    Not far, but near, I stood and saw it all
    Behind low boughs the trees let down outside;
    And the sweet pang it cost me not to call
    And tell you that I saw does still abide.
    But 'tis not true that thus I dwelt aloof,
    For the wood wakes, and you are here for proof.

    THEY leave us so to the way we took,
    As two in whom they were proved mistaken,
    That we sit sometimes in the wayside nook,
    With mischievous, vagrant, seraphic look,
    And try if we cannot feel forsaken.

    IF tired of trees I seek again mankind,
    Well I know where to hie me—in the dawn,
    To a slope where the cattle keep the lawn.
    There amid lolling juniper reclined,
    Myself unseen, I see in white defined
    Far off the homes of men, and farther still,
    The graves of men on an opposing hill,
    Living or dead, whichever are to mind.
    And if by moon I have too much of these,
    I have but to turn on