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O covering grasses! O Unchanging trees!

Is it not good to feel the odorous wind

Come down upon you with such harmonies

Only the giant hills can ever find?

O little leaves, are ye not glad to be?

Is not the sunlight fair, the shadow kind,

That falls at noon-time over you and me?

O gleam of birches lost among the firs,

Let your high treble chime in silverly

Across the half-imagined wind that stirs

A muffled organ-music from the pines!

Earth knows to-day that not one note of hers

Is minor. For, behold, the loud sun shines

Till the young maples are no longer gray,

And stronger grow their faint, uncertain lines

Each violet takes a deeper blue to-day,

And purpler swell the cones hung overhead,

Until the sound of their far feet who

About the wood, fades from me; and, instead,

I hear a robin singing—not as one

That calls unto his mate, uncomforted—

But as one sings a welcome to the sun.

Not among men, or near men-fashioned things,

In the old years found I this present ease,

Though I have known the fellowship of kings

And tarried long in splendid palaces.

The worship of vast peoples has been mine,

The homage of uncounted pageantries.

Sea-offerings, and fruits of field and vine

Have humble folk been proud to bring to me;

And woven cloths of wonderful design

Have lain untouched in far lands over-sea,

Till the rich traffickers beheld my sails.

Long caravans have toiled on wearily—

Harassed yet watchful of their costly bales—

Across wide sandy places, glad to bear

Strange oils and perfumes strained in Indian vales,

Great gleaming rubies torn from some queen's hair,