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4.
These I, singing in spring, collect for lovers,
(For who but I should understand lovers, and all their
sorrow and joy?
And who but I should be the poet of comrades?)
Collecting, I traverse the garden, the world—but
soon I pass the gates,
Now along the pond-side—now wading in a little,
fearing not the wet,
Now by the post-and-rail fences, where the old stones
thrown there, picked from the fields, have accumulated,
Wild-flowers and vines and weeds come up through
the stones, and partly cover them—Beyond these
I pass,
Far, far in the forest, before I think where I get,
Solitary, smelling the earthy smell, stopping now and
then in the silence.
Alone I had thought—yet soon a silent troop gathers
around me,
Some walk by my side, and some behind, and some
embrace my arms or neck,
They, the spirits of friends, dead or alive—thicker
they come, a great crowd, and I in the middle,
Collecting, dispensing, singing in spring, there I wander
with them,
Plucking something for tokens—something for these,
till I hit upon a name—tossing toward whoever
is near me,
