The Pine Forest of the Cascine Near Pisa

Dearest, best and brightest,Come away,To the woods and to the fields!Dearer than this fairest dayWhich, like thee to those in sorrow,Comes to bid a sweet good-morrowTo the rough Year just awakeIn its cradle in the brake.The eldest of the Hours of Spring,Into the Winter wandering,Looks upon the leafless wood,And the banks all bare and rude;Found, it seems, this halcyon MornIn February's bosom born,Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth,Kissed the cold forehead of the Earth,And smiled upon the silent sea,And bade the frozen streams be free;And waked to music all the fountains,And breathed upon the rigid mountains,And made the wintry world appearLike one on whom thou smilest, Dear.

Radiant Sister of the Day,Awake! arise! and come away!To the wild woods and the plains,To the pools where winter rainsImage all the roof of leaves,Where the pine its garland weavesSapless, gray, and ivy dunRound stems that never kiss the sun--To the sandhills of the sea,Where the earliest violets be.

Now the last day of many days,All beautiful and bright as thou,The loveliest and the last, is dead,Rise, Memory, and write its praise!And do thy wonted work and traceThe epitaph of glory fled;For now the Earth has changed its face,A frown is on the Heaven's brow.

We wandered to the Pine ForestThat skirts the Ocean's foam,The lightest wind was in its nest,The tempest in its home.

The whispering waves were half asleep,The clouds were gone to play,And on the woods, and on the deepThe smile of Heaven lay.

It seemed as if the day were oneSent from beyond the skies,Which shed to earth above the sunA light of Paradise.

We paused amid the pines that stood,The giants of the waste,Tortured by storms to shapes as rudeWith stems like serpents interlaced.

How calm it was--the silence thereBy such a chain was bound,That even the busy woodpeckerMade stiller by her sound

The inviolable quietness;The breath of peace we drewWith its soft motion made not lessThe calm that round us grew.

It seemed that from the remotest seatOf the white mountain's wasteTo the bright flower beneath our feet,A magic circle traced;--

A spirit interfused around,A thinking, silent life;To momentary peace it boundOur mortal nature's strife;--

And still, it seemed, the centre ofThe magic circle there,Was one whose being filled with loveThe breathless atmosphere.

Were not the crocuses that grewUnder that ilex-treeAs beautiful in scent and hueAs ever fed the bee?

We stood beneath the pools that lieUnder the forest bough,And each seemed like a skyGulfed in a world below;

A purple firmament of lightWhich in the dark earth lay,More boundless than the depth of night,And clearer than the day--

In which the massy forests grewAs in the upper air,More perfect both in shape and hueThan any waving there.

Like one beloved the scene had lentTo the dark water's breastIts every leaf and lineamentWith that clear truth expressed;

There lay far glades and neighbouring lawn,And through the dark green crowdThe white sun twinkling like the dawnUnder a speckled cloud.

Sweet views, which in our world aboveCan never well be seen,Were imaged by the water's loveOf that fair forest green.

And all was interfused beneathWith an Elysian air,An atmosphere without a breath,A silence sleeping there.

Until a wandering wind crept by,Like an unwelcome thought,Which from my mind's too faithful eyeBlots thy bright image out.

For thou art good and dear and kind,The forest ever green,But less of peace in S--'s mind,Than calm in waters, seen. 116.