Explore "To a Hermit Thrush" by Olive Tilford Dargan on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Dweller among leaves, and shining twilight boughs / That fold cool arms about thine altar place, / What joyous race / Of gods dost serve with such unfaltering vows?
Weave me a time-fringed tale / Of slumbering, haunted trees, / And star-sweet fragrances / No day defiled; / Of bowering nights innumerable, / And nestling hours breath-nigh a dryad's heart / That sleeping yet was wild / With dream-beat that thou mad'st a part / Of thy dawn-fluting; ay, and keep'st it still, / Striving so late these godless woods to fill / With undefeated strain, / And in one hour build the old world again. / Wast thou found singing when Diana drew / Her skirts from the first night? / Didst feel the sun-breath when the valleys grew / Warm with the love of light, / Till blades of flower-lit green gave to the wind / The mystery that made sweet / The earth forever, -- strange and undefined / As life, as God, as this thy song complete / That holds with me twin memories / Of time ere men, / And ere our ways / Lay sundered with the abyss of air between?