O cunning Oak! What is your skill To hold the god against my will? Keep your favours back like me, With disfavour he shall see Orange hues of jealousy: Show your leaf in early prime, It shall be dark before its time: Me you shall not rival ever. Silver Birch, would you endeavour, Trembling in your bridal dress, To win at last a dog's caress? Through your twigs so thin and dark Shows the black and ashen bark, Like a face that underneath Tightened eyebrows looks on death. Think not, dwarf, that Pan shall find Aught about you to his mind. Cuckoo! Cuckoo! All shall try To win him. But the beech and I, Man and tree made one at last, Alone have power to hold him fast. Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Forth I creep, When the flowers fall asleep, And upgather odours rare Floating on the misty air, All to be imprisoned where My sap is rising till they reach The swelling twigs, and thence shall each Separate scent be shaken free As my flowers and leaves agree. Rare in sooth those flowers shall be: Cunningly will I devise Colours to delight the eyes, Slipping from my fissured stem To get by stealth or stratagem The glory of the morning petal. Where the bees at noontide settle, Mine to rifle all their sweets: Honey and bee-bread on the teats Of my blossoms shall be spread, Till the lime-trees shake with dread Of the marvels still to come When their bees about me hum. Welcome, welcome, cloudless night, Is our labour ended quite? Are the mortal and the tree Now made one in ecstasy, One in foretaste of the dawn? Crescent moon, sink, sink outworn! Stars be buried, stars be born, Mount and dip to tell aright The doings of the morrow's light! Mists, assemble, hide me quite, Till the sun with growing strength Grips your veils, and length by length Tears them down from head to foot; Then to the challenge I am put! Tell me busy, busy glade, Half in light and half in shade, Is your world of wood-folk there? All are come but the mole and hare; One is blind, and underground Of that tumult hears no sound; The other Pan has crept within, To bask afield in the hare-skin. All are come of woodland fowl But the cuckoo and the owl; The owl's asleep, and the cuckoo-bird Nowhere seen is eachwhere heard. Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Those that see The leafing of this great beech-tree, And its flowers of every kind, Woodland lovers have in mind; Those that breathe the scented wind Or touch this bark of satin, could Never issue from our wood. Tell me, busy, busy glade, Are little flying things afraid? All are come of aery folk, Gnats that hover like a smoke, Butterflies and humble-bees, Insects winged in all degrees, Honey-toilers, pleasure-makers, Of labours and of joys forsakers, Round these boughs to live and die. Only the moth and the dragon-fly Keep their haunts and come not nigh: The moth is moonstruck, she must creep With twitching wings, and half-asleep, Through folds of darkness; and that other, The dragon-fly, Narcissus' brother, Flashes all his burnished mail In a still pool adown the dale.