MY THEME--_Continued_ 180 TIME AND SENTIMENT 181 THE WOODS OF WESTERMAIN. I. Enter these enchanted woods, You who dare. Nothing harms beneath the leaves More than waves a swimmer cleaves. Toss your heart up with the lark, Foot at peace with mouse and worm, Fair you fare. Only at a dread of dark Quaver, and they quit their form: Thousand eyeballs under hoods Have you by the hair. Enter these enchanted woods, You who dare. II. Here the snake across your path Stretches in his golden bath: Mossy-footed squirrels leap Soft as winnowing plumes of Sleep: Yaffles on a chuckle skim Low to laugh from branches dim: Up the pine, where sits the star, Rattles deep the moth-winged jar. Each has business of his own; But should you distrust a tone, Then beware. Shudder all the haunted roods, All the eyeballs under hoods Shroud you in their glare. Enter these enchanted woods, You who dare. III. Open hither, open hence, Scarce a bramble weaves a fence, Where the strawberry runs red, With white star-flower overhead; Cumbered by dry twig and cone, Shredded husks of seedlings flown, Mine of mole and spotted flint: Of dire wizardry no hint, Save mayhap the print that shows Hasty outward-tripping toes, Heels to terror, on the mould. These, the woods of Westermain, Are as others to behold, Rich of wreathing sun and rain; Foliage lustreful around Shadowed leagues of slumbering sound. Wavy tree-tops, yellow whins, Shelter eager minikins, Myriads, free to peck and pipe: Would you better? would you worse? You with them may gather ripe Pleasures flowing not from purse. Quick and far as Colour flies Taking the delighted eyes, You of any well that springs May unfold the heaven of things; Have it homely and within, And thereof its likeness win, Will you so in soul’s desire: This do sages grant t’ the lyre. This is being bird and more, More than glad musician this; Granaries you will have a store Past the world of woe and bliss; Sharing still its bliss and woe; Harnessed to its hungers, no. On the throne Success usurps, You shall seat the joy you feel Where a race of water chirps, Twisting hues of flourished steel: Or where light is caught in hoop Up a clearing’s leafy rise, Where the crossing deerherds troop Classic splendours, knightly dyes. Or, where old-eyed oxen chew Speculation with the cud, Read their pool of vision through, Back to hours when mind was mud; Nigh the knot, which did untwine Timelessly to drowsy suns; Seeing Earth a slimy spine, Heaven a space for winging tons. Farther, deeper, may you read, Have you sight for things afield, Where peeps she, the Nurse of seed, Cloaked, but in the peep revealed; Showing a kind face and sweet: