Ode on a Silver Birch in St James' Park

1. Muse, I will show thee, on a grassy mound / Moving with tufted shadows, albeit bare / Herself, for yet young April primes the air / And bloom snow-laden boughs, the tree I love. / London doth compass it with shores of sound / And thrills the buds when there's no breath above / To shake its fountain beauty. Thus I came / Along the courtly mere of thicket isles, / And Spring entoil'd me in a hundred wiles, / Bringing the heart content without a name. / Broods, russet-plumed and emerald, steer'd on / With arrowy wake adown the placid tide / And in that gloomy pool there rode enskied, / Aloof, the stately languor of a swan. / But now the lake sets hither with a breeze / And crooks the peel'd bole of its planes. -- Ah, there / Thou shall find audience -- yon's my shadowy love! -- / O'er head a rose-grey pigeon beat his wings / About his 'lighted mate, and wooed the bough / And passion born of sight of mortal things / In warmth of living, moved and moves me now / As from the careless height that sways above / Floateth his voice, the soul of greening trees.

2. Approaching 'twixt the herald saplings pale / Whose light arrayment is a whirl of green / Of flamelets dropping for a virgin veil, / I come. Though Hades' crocus-jets are stayed, / Soft! for a golden troop instead upsprung / Gossips apart in yon unfooted glade. / Broke we on earshot of that frolic tongue / Straightway would all be husht, they being afraid / To sing't to simple ear of mutest maid.