THE morn is softly beautiful and still,
Its light fair clouds in pencilled gold and gray
Pause motionless above the pine-grown hill,
Where the pines, tranced as by a wizard's will,
Uprise as mute and motionless as they!
Yea! mute and moveless; not one flickering spray
Flashed into sunlight, nor a gaunt bough stirred;
Yet, if wooed hence beneath those pines to stray,
We catch a faint, thin murmur far away,
A bodiless voice, by grosser ears heard.
What voice is this? what low and solemn tone,
Which, though all wings of all the winds seem furled,
Nor even the zephyr's fairy flute is blown,
Makes thus forever its mysterious moan
From out the whispering pine-tops' shadowy world?
Ah! can it be the antique tales are true?
Doth some lone Dryad haunt the breezeless air,
Fronting yon bright immitigable blue,
And wildly breathing all her wild soul through
That strange unearthly music of despair?
Or can it be that ages since, storm-tossed,
And driven far inland from the roaring lea,
Some battled ocean-spirit, worn and lost,
Here, through dry summer's dearth and winter's frost,
Yearns for the sharp, sweet kisses of the sea?
Whate'er the spell, I hearken and am dumb,
Dream-touched, and musing in the tranquil morn;
All woodland sounds--the pheasant's gusty drum,
The mock-bird's fugue, the droning insect's hum--
Scarce heard for that strange, sorrowful voice forlorn!
Beneath the drowsèd sense, from deep to deep
Of spiritual life its mournful minor flows,
Streamlike, with pensive tide, whose currents keep
Low murmuring 'twixt the bounds of grief and sleep,
Yet locked for aye from sleep's divine repose.
