dew

In evening's limpid air, What time the dew's soothings Unto the earth downpour, Invisibly and unheard-- For tender shoe-gear wear The soothing dews, like all that's kind-gentle--: Bethinkst thou then, bethinkst thou, burning heart, How once thou thirstedest For heaven's kindly teardrops and dew's down-droppings, All singed and weary thirstedest, What time on yellow grass-pathways Wicked, occidental sunny glances Through sombre trees about thee sported, Blindingly sunny glow-glances, gladly-hurting?

We feel rather the beauty of flowers, the warmth of sun, the softness of spring winds, and see the greening trees, the morning dews, the soft rains.

The night wind tells me secrets Of lotus lilies blue; And hour by hour the willows Shake down the chiming dew.

For, see you, it was our custom to lick the dew from the oar-blades, the gunwales, the thwarts, and the inside planking.

The silly buckets on the deck, That had so long remained, I dreamt that they were filled with dew; And when I awoke, it rained.

The dew, not visible till the sun was up, wetted Levin's legs and his blouse above his belt in the high growing, fragrant hemp patch, from which the pollen had already fallen out.

At night when the sun went down, the sheets were slackened; in the morning, when they yielded up the damp of the dew and relaxed, they were pulled tight again--and that was all.

NOT long ago, the writer of these lines, In the mad pride of intellectuality, Maintained "the power of words"--denied that ever A thought arose within the human brain Beyond the utterance of the human tongue: And now, as if in mockery of that boast, Two words-two foreign soft dissyllables-- Italian tones, made only to be murmured By angels dreaming in the moonlit "dew That hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill,"-- Have stirred from out the abysses of his heart, Unthought-like thoughts that are the souls of thought, Richer, far wider, far diviner visions Than even the seraph harper, Israfel,(Who has "the sweetest voice of all God's creatures") Could hope to utter.