No grot divine, or wood-nymph haunted glen, Or stream, or fount, shall these young shades e'er know. No beautiful divinity, stealing afar Through darkling nooks, to poet's eye thence gleam; With mocking mystery the dim ways wind, They reach not to the blessed fairy-land That once all lovely in heaven's stolen light, To yearning thoughts, in the deep green-wood grew. Ah! had they come to light when nature Was a wonder-loving, story-telling child!-- The misty morn of ages had gone by, The dreamy childhood of the race was past, And in its tame and reasoning manhood, In the daylight broad, and noon-day of all time, _This_ world hath sprung. The poetry of _truth_, None other, shall her shining lakes, and woods, And ocean-streams, and hoary mountains wear. Perchance that other day of poesy, Unsung of prophets, that upon the lands Shall dawn yet, thence shall spring. The self-same mind That on the night of ages once, for us Those deathless clusters flung, the self-same mind, With all its ancient elements of might, Among us now its ancient glory hides; But, from its smothered power, and buried wealth, A golden future sparkles, decked from deeper founts, A new and lovelier firmament, A thousand realms of song undreamed of now, That shall make Romance a forgotten world, And the young heaven of Antiquity, With all its starry groups, a gathered scroll. _Mor_. Ay, Andre, you were born a poet, and have mistaken your art. Prythee excuse me, who am but a poor soldier, for marring so fine a rhapsody with any thing so sublunary; but, methinks, for an enemy's quarters, yonder fort shows as peaceable a front of stone and mortar as one could ask for. What can it mean that they are so quiet there? _Andre_. That spy did not return a second time. _Mor_. The rogues have made sure of him ere this, I fancy. They may have given us the slip,--who knows? _Andre_. I would like to venture a stroll through that shady street if I thought so. A dim impression that I have somewhere seen this view before, haunts me unaccountably. _Mor_. How I hate that sober, afternoon air, that hangs like an invisible presence over it all. You can see it in the sunshine on those white walls, you can hear it in the hum of the bee from the bending thistle here. _Andre_. Of the mind it is. This were lovely as the morning light, but for the shade it gathers thence, from the thought of decline and the vanishing day. 'Tis a pretty spot. _Mor_. Yes, but the quiet goings-on of life are all hushed there now. _Andre_. Ay, this is the hour, when the home-bound children swing the gate with a merry spring, and the mother sits at her work by the open window, with her quiet eye, and the daughter, with the beauty of an untamed soul in her's, looks forth on the woods and meadows, and thinks of her walk at even-tide. I thought it was something like a memory that haunted me thus,--'tis the spot that Maitland talked of yesterday.