Foot at peace with mouse and worm,
Fair you fare.

Only at a dread of dark

Quaver, and they quit their form:
Thousand eyeballs under hoods
Have you by the hair.

Enter these enchanted woods,
You who dare.

Here the snake across your path
Stretches in his golden bath:
Mossy-footed squirrels leap

Soft as winnowing plumes of Sleep:
Yaffles on a chuckle skin

Low to laugh from branches dim:
Up the pine, where sits the star,
Rattles deep the moth-winged jar.
Each has business of his own;
But should you distrust a tone,
Then beware.

Shudder all the haunted roods,
All the eyeballs under hoods
Shroud you in their glare.
Enter these enchanted woods,
You who dare.

George Meredith

TI

THE TIGER

IGER, Tiger, burning bright In the forest of the night, What immortal hand or eye Framed thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burned that fire within thine eyes?

On what wings dared he aspire?
What the hand dared seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
When thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand formed thy dread feet?

What the hammer, what the chain,

Knit thy strength and forged thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dared thy deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the lamb make thee?

William Blake

LINES

FROM The Faun

IST! there's a stir in the brush.

Hasite's

Η

Was it a face through the leaves?

Back of the laurels a skurry and rush

Hillward, then silence except for the thrush That throws one song from the dark of the bush And is gone; and I plunge in the wood, and the swift soul cleaves

Through the swirl and the flow of the leaves, As a swimmer stands with his white limbs bare to the sun

For the space that a breath is held, and drops in

the sea;

And the undulant woodland folds round me, intimate, fluctant, free

Like the clasp and the cling of waters, and the reach and the effort is done,—

There is only the glory of living, exultant to be.
O goodly damp smell of the ground!

O rough sweet bark of the trees!
O clear sharp cracklings of sound!
O life that's athrill and a-bound

With the vigor of boyhood and morning, and the noon-tide's rapture of ease!

Was there ever a weary heart in the world? A lag in the body's urge or a flag of the spirit's wings?

Did a man's heart ever break

For a lost hope's sake?

For here there is lilt in the quiet and calm in the quiver of things.

Richard Hovey

LOCKUNG

ÖRST du nicht die Bäume rauschen

Draussen durch die stille Rund'?

Lockt's dich nicht, hinabzulauschen
Von dem Söller in den Grund,
Wo die vielen Bäche gehen
Wunderbar im Mondenschein,
Und die stillen Schlösser sehen
In den Fluss vom hohen Stein?

Kennst du noch die irren Lieder
Aus der alten, schönen Zeit?
Sie erwachen alle wieder
Nachts in Waldeseinsamkeit,

Wenn die Bäume traümend lauschen
Und der Flieder duftet schwül
Und im Fluss die Nixen rauschen
Komm herab, hier ist's so kühl.

Joseph von Eichendorff

ABSCHIED

THÄLER weit, O Höhen,

O schöner, grüner Wald,

Du meiner Lust und Wehen
Andächt'ger Aufenthalt!

Da draussen, stets betrogen,
Saust die geschäft'ge Welt,
Schlag noch einmal die Bogen
Um mich, du grünes Zelt!

Wenn es beginnt zu tagen,
Die Erde stampft und blinkt,
Die Vögel lustig schlagen,
Dass dir dein Herz erklingt:
Da mag vergehn, verwehen
Das trübe Erdenleid,
Da sollst du auferstehen
In jünger Herrlichkeit!

Bald werd' ich dich verlassen,
Fremd in die Fremde gehn,
Auf buntbewegten Gassen
Des Lebens Schauspiel sehen;
Und mitten in dem Leben
Wird deines Ernsts Gewalt
Mich Einsamen erheben,
So wird mein Herz nicht alt.

Joseph von Eichendorff

E wandered to the Pine Forest

WE That skirts the Ocean's foam,

The lightest breeze was in its nest,
The tempest in its home.

The whispering waves were half asleep,
The clouds were gone to play,
And on the bosom of the deep,
The smile of Heaven lay;

It seemed as if the hour were one
Sent from beyond the skies,

Which scattered from above the sun
A light of Paradise.

We paused amid the pines that stood
The giants of the waste,

Tortured by storms to shapes as rude
As serpents interlaced,

And soothed by every azure breath,
That under heaven is blown,
To harmonies and hues beneath,
As tender as its own:

Now all the tree-tops lay asleep,
Like green waves on the sea,
As still as in the silent deep
The ocean woods may be.

How calm it was! - the silence there
By such a chain was bound
That even the busy woodpecker
Made stiller by her sound
The inviolable quietness;

The breath of peace we drew

With its soft motion made not less
The calm that round us grew.
There seemed from the remotest seat
Of the white mountain waste,
To the soft flower beneath our feet,
A magic circle traced,—

A spirit interfused around
A thrilling silent life,

To momentary peace it bound