Songs, Merry and Sad

An Idyl

     Upon a gnarly, knotty limb
      That fought the current's crest,
     Where shocks of reeds peeped o'er the brim,
      Wild wasps had glued their nest.

     And in a sprawling cypress' grot,
      Sheltered and safe from flood,
     Dirt-daubers each had chosen a spot
      To shape his house of mud.

     In a warm crevice of the bark
      A basking scorpion clung,
     With bright blue tail and red-rimmed eyes
      And yellow, twinkling tongue.

     A lunging trout flashed in the sun,
      To do some petty slaughter,
     And set the spiders all a-run
      On little stilts of water.

     Toward noon upon the swamp there stole
      A deep, cathedral hush,
     Save where, from sun-splocht bough and bole,
      Sweet thrush replied to thrush.

     An angler came to cast his fly
      Beneath a baffling tree.
     I smiled, when I had caught his eye,
      And he smiled back at me.

     When stretched beside a shady elm
      I watched the dozy heat,
     Nature was moving in her realm,
      For I could hear her feet.