HERE they trysted, here they strayed, In the leafage dewy and boon, Many a man and many a maid, And the morn was merry June. ‘Death is fleet, Life is sweet,’ Sang the blackbird in the may; And the hour with flying feet, While they dreamed, was yesterday. Many a maid and many a man Found the leafage close and boon; Many a destiny began— O, the morn was merry June! Dead and gone, dead and gone, (Hark the blackbird in the may!), Life and Death went hurrying on, Cheek on cheek—and where were they? Dust on dust engendering dust In the leafage fresh and boon, Man and maid fulfil their trust— Still the morn turns merry June. Mother Life, Father Death (O, the blackbird in the may!), Each the other’s breath for breath, Fleet the times of the world away. XXIV _To_ A. C. NOT to the staring Day, For all the importunate questionings he pursues In his big, violent voice, Shall those mild things of bulk and multitude, The Trees—God’s sentinels Over His gift of live, life-giving air, Yield of their huge, unutterable selves. Midsummer-manifold, each one Voluminous, a labyrinth of life, They keep their greenest musings, and the dim dreams That haunt their leafier privacies, Dissembled, baffling the random gapeseed still With blank full-faces, or the innocent guile Of laughter flickering back from shine to shade, And disappearances of homing birds, And frolicsome freaks Of little boughs that frisk with little boughs. But at the word Of the ancient, sacerdotal Night, Night of the many secrets, whose effect— Transfiguring, hierophantic, dread— Themselves alone may fully apprehend, They tremble and are changed. In each, the uncouth individual soul Looms forth and glooms Essential, and, their bodily presences Touched with inordinate significance, Wearing the darkness like the livery Of some mysterious and tremendous guild, They brood—they menace—they appal; Or the anguish of prophecy tears them, and they wring Wild hands of warning in the face Of some inevitable advance of the doom; Or, each to the other bending, beckoning, signing As in some monstrous market-place, They pass the news, these Gossips of the Prime, In that old speech their forefathers Learned on the lawns of Eden, ere they heard The troubled voice of Eve Naming the wondering folk of Paradise.