Of wood and water, hill and plain;
    Once more am I admitted peer
    In the upper house of Nature here,
    And feel through all my pulses run
    The royal blood of breeze and sun. 60

      Upon these elm-arched solitudes
    No hum of neighbor toil intrudes;
    The only hammer that I hear
    Is wielded by the woodpecker,
    The single noisy calling his 65
    In all our leaf-hid Sybaris;
    The good old time, close-hidden here,
    Persists, a loyal cavalier,
    While Roundheads prim, with point of fox,
    Probe wainscot-chink and empty box; 70
    Here no hoarse-voiced iconoclast
    Insults thy statues, royal Past;
    Myself too prone the axe to wield,
    I touch the silver side of the shield
    With lance reversed, and challenge peace, 75
    A willing convert of the trees.

      How chanced it that so long I tost
    A cable’s length from this rich coast,
    With foolish anchors hugging close
    The beckoning weeds and lazy ooze, 80
    Nor had the wit to wreck before
    On this enchanted island’s shore,
    Whither the current of the sea,
    With wiser drift, persuaded me?

      O, might we but of such rare days 85
    Build up the spirit’s dwelling-place! 
    A temple of so Parian stone
    Would brook a marble god alone,
    The statue of a perfect life,
    Far-shrined from earth’s bestaining strife. 90
    Alas! though such felicity
    In our vext world here may not be,
    Yet, as sometimes the peasant’s hut
    Shows stones which old religion cut
    With text inspired, or mystic sign 95
    Of the Eternal and Divine,
    Torn from the consecration deep
    Of some fallen nunnery’s mossy sleep,
    So, from the ruins of this day
    Crumbling in golden dust away, 100
    The soul one gracious block may draw,
    Carved with some fragment of the law,
    Which, set in life’s prosaic wall,
    Old benedictions may recall,
    And lure some nunlike thoughts to take 105
    Their dwelling here for memory’s sake.

THE FOOT-PATH.

    It mounts athwart the windy hill
      Through sallow slopes of upland bare,
    And Fancy climbs with foot-fall still
      Its narrowing curves that end in air.

    By day, a warmer-hearted blue 5
      Stoops softly to that topmost swell;
    Its thread-like windings seem a clew
      To gracious climes where all is well.