Ambarvalia/Burbidge/To Aganippe
TO AGANIPPE.
Yet once again, thou little silent Spring,
Which, welling from beneath the green hillside,
Makest one dimple on the placid face
Of contemplative Avon, one alone
For ever floating off, ever caught back,
Or, as it dies, reborn,—yet once again
I stand beside thee with a heart at home,
And can behold thee with the quiet love
We give to things domestic, which we see
At morn with tranquil pleasure, and at night
Can close our eyes on calmly, doubting not
To see the same again with morn renewed.
Yet once again beside thee, little Spring,
The murmuring Muse draws near, and with a voice
That might, here heard among these shady trees,
Be taken for thy voice, silent Spring,
Bids me rejoice aloud!
More foreign lands,
quiet Spring, than in a summer's length
Thou bringest bubbles from thy secret cell
To disappear in daylight, have my eyes
Conceived and let as willingly escape,
Since I stood last beside thee, feeding thus
Calm verse from a calm heart. Delicious nest
Of shadow, with sweet inlet for the sun
Through loopholes of the orange or the vine
Have I enjoyed, while veins of crystal water
Broke at my side from mountains lost in air;
Sweet chapels of the pinewoods, odorous
With natural incense, where a million stems
On every side with all their lights and shades
Made glimmering walls, that, serving to confine
The worshipping fancy, sank before the eye
Each in an endless distance, an abyss
Of columns, exquisitely soaring up
From mossy floors, smooth as a tranquil lake,
Into the figured darkness overhead;
Nor (nearer thine own kind, sweet native cell!)
Among soft hills by rivers broad and soft,
Have nooks and quiet foldings of the banks
Green as thyself, been wanting, where to sit
Watching an evening sun, or leisurely
Tracking the leisure of the noonday clouds.
O little native cell, clear is thy spring
And green thy Birch-tree with its myriad threads
One image seen, for ever soaring up,
Yet evermore descending; and my eye
Acknowledges its joy—but something more
Is thine than in the visual organ rests
Or ever through the avenue of sight
Made entrance to the heart.—What is it?—What?
Who answers? In the thick and bowery copse
Sinks, sinks my voice—'tis lost!—the parted hum
Of the busy flies and insects, closes again,
And the multitudinous silence of the green world
Resumes its reign. There is no answer. Yet,
O little native cell, though none express
Nor even the tear-dimmed inner eye discern
The nature of thy charm, yet I assert
That thou art fairer than the fairest niche
The earth hath shown me since I saw thee last;
And he shall mock thy claim, and only he,
Who never from a foreign land with joy
Came home, and never in his home possessed
A single leafy cell with a bright Spring
Enlivening it, which he had made his own,
Lived in—and loved in!