Page:Poems Forrest.djvu/159

Slow she moved, like cloud at morning, when the south-wind idly dreams,
And her presence breathed of woodlands and of drowsy sunlit streams;
Not of edelweiss nor gentian, strangers of the upper air,
But of violets damp in corners, pools set round with maiden-hair;
Dancing lights on cabin windows, glow-worms burning in the dark;
Treading down the crackling needles, 'twixt the pine-boles, brown and stark,
Moving like a doomed to-morrow from the earth vales and the lea,
With a red rose in her fingers she came up the hills to me.

For a space we spoke of valleys, for she liked my mountain eyes,
And I set within her fillet one pale bloom of edelweiss,
And I drank of earth-bees' honey in the hiving of her lips;
Towns we talked instead of mountains, and instead of oceans, ships;
But the upper air grew chilly and she shivered from my breast,
With my token on her forehead, down towards the vale she prest.

God has set a moon this evening like a ghost between the trees,
And the plain is white and splendid out towards the calling seas,
And the light of Heaven's garden through its golden oriels flows;
But my heart is valley-tethered to the whisper of a rose!