Cross Roads

WOOD MAGIC

     The woods lay dreaming in a topaz dream,
        And we, who silently roamed hand in hand,
        Were pilgrims in a strange, enchanted land,
     Where life was love, and love was all a-gleam.

     And old remembered songs came back to greet
        Our ears, from other worlds of long ago,
        The worlds that we of earth may seldom know—
     And to those songs we timed our vagrant feet.

     We did not speak, we did not need to say
        The thought that lay so buried in our hearts—
        The thoughts as sweet as springtime rain, that
           starts
     The buds to blossoming in wistful May.

     We did not need to speak, we could not speak,
        The wonder words that we in silence knew—
        We walked, as very little children do,
     Who feel, but cannot tell, the thing they seek.

     Beyond a screen of bushes, bending low,
        We knew that fair Titania lay at rest,
        Her pillowed head upon her lover's breast,
     Her kisses swift as birds that come and go!

     And underneath a wall of mottled stone,
        We knew the sleeping beauty lay in state,
        Entangled in a mist of tears, to wait
     The prince whose kiss would raise her to a throne.

     Perhaps a witch with single flaming eye,
        Was watching from beneath the hemlock tree;
        And fairies that our gaze might never see,
     Laughed at us as we, hand in hand, crept by.

     Laughed at us? No, I somehow think they knew
        That you and I were kin to them that day!
        I think they knew that we were years away
     From everything but make-believe, come true.

     I think they knew that, singing through the air,
        There thrilled a vague, insistent, harp-like call—
        And that, where woodbine blazed against the wall,
     You held me close and kissed my wind-tossed hair!