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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!
