BEYOND our moss-grown pathway lies
A dell so fair, to genial eyes,
It dawns an ever-fresh surprise!
To touch its charms with gentler grace,
The softened heavens a loving face
Bend o'er that sweet, secluded place.
There first, despite the March wind's cold,
Above the pale-hued emerald mould
The earliest spring-tide buds unfold;
There first the ardent mock-bird, long
Winter's dumb thrall, from winter's wrong
Breaks into gleeful floods of song;
Till, from coy thrush to garrulous wren,
The humbler bards of copse and glen
Outpour their vernal notes again;
While such harmonious rapture rings,
With stir and flash of eager wings
Glimpsed fleetly, where the jasmine clings
To bosk and briar, we blithely say,
"Farewell! bleak nights and mornings gray,
Earth opes her festal court to-day!"
There, first, from out some balmy nest,
By half-grown woodbine flowers caressed,
Steal zephyrs of the mild southwest;
O'er purpling rows of wild-wood peas,
So blandly borne, the droning bees
Still suck their honeyed cores at ease;
Or, trembling through you verdurous mass,
Dew-starred, and dimpling as they pass,
The wavelets of the billowy grass!
But, fairest of fair things that dwell
'Mid sylvan nurslings of the dell,
Is that clear stream whose murmurs swell
To music's airiest issues wrought,
As if a Naiad's tongue were fraught
With secrets of its whispered thought.
Yes, fairest of fair things, it flows
'Twixt banks of violet and of rose,
Touched always by a quaint repose.
How golden bright its currents glide!
While goldenly from side to side
Bird shadows flit athwart the tide.
So Golden Dell we name the place,
And aye may Heaven's serenest face
Dream o'er it with a smile of grace;
For next the moss-grown path it lies,
So pure, so fresh to genial eyes
It glows with hints of Paradise!
