A Day for Wandering

I SET apart a day for wandering；

　　I heard the woodlands ring,

　　The hidden white-throat sing,

　　And the harmonic West,

　　Beyond a far hill-crest,

　　Touch its Aeolian string.

　　Remote from all the brawl and bruit of men,

　　The iron tongue of Trade,

　　I followed the clear calling of a wren

　　Deep to the bosom of a sheltered glade,

　　Where interwoven branches spread a shade

　　Of soft cool beryl like the evening seas

　　Unruffled by the breeze.

　　And there—and there—

　　I watched the maiden-hair,

　　The pale blue iris-grass,

　　The water-spider in its pause and pass

　　Upon a pool that like a mirror was.

　　I took for confidant

　　The diligent ant 20

　　Threading the clover and the sorrel aisles；

　　For me were all the smiles

　　Of the sequestered blossoms there abloom—

　　Chalice and crown and plume；

　　I drank the ripe rich attars blurred and blent,

　　And won—Content！