Night, and one single ridge of narrow path Between the sullen river and the woods Waving and muttering, for the moonless night Has shaped them into images of life, Like the uprising of the giant-ghosts, Looking on earth to know how their sons fare: Thou art so close by me, the roughest swell Of wind in the tree-tops hides not the panting Of thy soft breasts. No, we will pass to morning-- Morning, the rocks and valleys and old woods. How the sun brightens in the mist, and here, Half in the air, like creatures of the place, Trusting the element, living on high boughs That swing in the wind--look at the silver spray Flung from the foam-sheet of the cataract Amid the broken rocks! Shall we stay here With the wild hawks? No, ere the hot noon come, Dive we down--safe! See this our new retreat Walled in with a sloped mound of matted shrubs, Dark, tangled, old and green, still sloping down To a small pool whose waters lie asleep Amid the trailing boughs turned water-plants: And tall trees overarch to keep us in, Breaking the sunbeams into emerald shafts, And in the dreamy water one small group Of two or three strange trees are got together Wondering at all around, as strange beasts herd Together far from their own land: all wildness, No turf nor moss, for boughs and plants pave all, And tongues of bank go shelving in the lymph, Where the pale-throated snake reclines his head, And old gray stones lie making eddies there, The wild-mice cross them dry-shod. Deeper in! Shut thy soft eyes--now look--still deeper in! This is the very heart of the woods all round Mountain-like heaped above us; yet even here One pond of water gleams; far off the river Sweeps like a sea, barred out from land; but one-- One thin clear sheet has overleaped and wound Into this silent depth, which gained, it lies Still, as but let by sufferance; the trees bend O'er it as wild men watch a sleeping girl, And through their roots long creeping plants out-stretch Their twined hair, steeped and sparkling; farther on, Tall rushes and thick flag-knots have combined To narrow it; so, at length, a silver thread, It winds, all noiselessly through the deep wood Till through a cleft-way, through the moss and stone, It joins its parent-river with a shout.