II.

Their meeting over, Ranolf strolled
About the flat where gardens gay
Bright in the morning sunbeams lay,
With large-leaved roots and basking fruits
That lolled on beds weedfree and clean
As fairies had the gardeners been
Then with the younger folk, a few
By Amo led, and one or two
Most brisk or curious of the old,
Crossed, paddling slow a large canoe,
The gleaming Lake's unrippled floor
To woody Nongotáha's shore,
To wing the hours of sultrier heat
With converse in a cool retreat—
A hillside hollow, whose sun-parched
And slippery grass of golden hue,
Green, like the half-ripe orange, grew
Where feathery locust-trees o'erarched
A little plot, an airy spot
Their yellow-blossomed branches laid
In luxury of emerald shade.
There Ranolf flung him down, at rest,
With that expansion of the breast
Exultant—all that unreprest
Abandonment to glad emotion
So fair a clime, a life so free,
page 112 With health and strength and buoyancy
Of spirit in supreme degree—
And more than all, and all enhancing,
That blooming Child of wood and wild
With shadowy hair and radiant face,
That glossy glancing thing of grace
With eyes in liquid splendour dancing,
Or calm, as if from some high place
Of bliss above this earthly scene
Her soul looked forth with light serene
No time could quench, no sorrow dim—
Might well excite, excuse in him,
A careless castaway of Ocean.
Before him lay no water, say
A hollow Sky inverted—blue,
With flecks of sun-illumined flue,
And mountains bung in crystal air
With peaks above and peaks below
Responsive—every feature fair
Reversed, in that transparent glow
Deep mirrored; every ferny spur
Each puckered slope, and wrinkle sleek
That creased their glossy forest-fur,
Sure at the water's edge to meet
Its upward-running counterfeit,
Exact as roseate streak for streak
Some opened Venus-shell displays,
Bivalve with answering spots and rays.
Far round were seen, o'er thicket green,
By sandy shore, in darksome glen,
Cloud-jets of steam whose snowy gleam,
But that they moved not, you would deem
The smoke of ambushed riflemen;
page 113 But peaceful these, nor passed away
For wind or hot refulgent day:
White, bright, and still, o'er wild and wood,
Like new-alighted Sprites they stood,
Pure in the brilliant breathlessness;
For breathless seemed the earth and sky,
Real and reflected; none the less
Because at times there wandered by
Over the sun-bathed greenery
A soft air, lifting like a sigh
Some tree-fern's fan, as if in sleep
It stirred in the noon-stillness deep,
Then sank in drowsy trance profound—
That faint distress the only sign
Of life o'er all the glorious sweep
Of verdure streaming down the steep.
So hushed the deep noon-glow around,
So splendour-bathed that vault divine,
The atmosphere so subtle-clear
'Twas rapture but to breathe it!—well
Might these have made more sober, staid,
Or pensive souls a moment fear
To break the soft luxurious spell,
The dreamy charm that wrapt the scene—
With utterance, even the most serene.