Poetical works of Mathilde Blind/Cleve Woods

by Mathilde Blind

 

III.—CLEVE WOODS.

Sweet Avon glides where clinging rushes seem
To stay his course, and, in his flattering glass,
Meadows and hills and mellow woodlands pass,
A fairer world as imaged in a dream.
And sometimes, in a visionary gleam,
From out the secret covert's tangled mass.
The fisher-bird starts from the rustling grass,
A jewelled shuttle shot along the stream.

Even here, methinks, when moon-lapped shallows smiled
Round isles no bigger than a baby's cot,
Titania found a glowworm-lighted child,
Led far astray, and, with anointing hand
Sprinklmg clear dew from a forget-me-not,
Hailed him the Laureate of her Fairyland.