By there comes a listless stranger: beckoned by the noise He drops towards the river: unseen Sees the bevy of them, how the boys With dare and with downdolphinry and bellbright bodies hud- dling out, Are earthworld, airworld, waterworld thorough hurled, all by turn and turn about. This garland of their gambols flashes in his breast Into such a sudden zest Of summertime joys That he hies to a pool neighbouring; sees it is the best There; sweetest, freshest, shadowiest; Fairyland; silk-beech, scrolled ash, packed sycamore, wild wychelm, hornbeam fretty overstood By. Rafts and rafts of flake-leaves light, dealt so, painted on the air, Hang as still as hawk or hawkmoth, as the stars or as the angels there, Like the thing that never knew the earth, never off roots Rose. Here he feasts: lovely all is! No more: off with-- down he dings His bleached both and woolwoven wear: Careless these in coloured wisp All lie tumbled-to; then with loop-locks Forward falling, forehead frowning, lips crisp Over finger-teasing task, his twiny boots Fast he opens, last he offwrings Till walk the world he can with bare his feet And come where lies a coffer, burly all of blocks Built of chancequarried, selfquained rocks And the water warbles over into, filleted with glassy grassy quicksilvery shives and shoots And with heavenfallen freshness down from moorland still brims, Dark or daylight on and on. Here he will then, here he will the fleet Flinty kindcold element let break across his limbs Long. Where we leave him, froliclavish while he looks about him, laughs, swims. Enough now; since the sacred matter that I mean I should be wronging longer leaving it to float Upon this only gambolling and echoing-of-earth note-- What is ... the delightful dene? Wedlock. What the water? Spousal love. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Father, mother, brothers, sisters, friends Into fairy trees, wild flowers, wood ferns Ranked round the bower . . . . . . . . . . EDITOR'S NOTES PREFACE TO NOTES AN editor of posthumous work is bounden to give some account of the authority for his text; and it is the purpose of the follow- ing notes to satisfy inquiry concerning matters whereof the present editor has the advantage of first-hand or particular knowledge. _Sources_ The sources are four, and will be distinguished as A, B, D, and H, as here described. _A_ is my own collection, a MS. book made up of Autographs--by which word I denote poems in the author's hand- Writing--pasted into it as they were received from him, and also of contemporary copies of other poems. These autographs and copies date from '67 to '89, the year of his death. Additions made by copying after that date are not reckoned or used. The first two items of the facsimiles at page 70 are cuttings from A.