2.

The hips were reddening on the rose, The haws hung slips of fire; We went the woodland way that goes Up hills of branch and briar.

The hooked thorn held her gown and seemed Imploring her be staying The sunlight of herself that beamed Beside it gently swaying.

Low bent the golden saxifrage; Its yellow bells like bangles The foxglove fluttered. Like a page — From out the rail-fence angles —

With crimson plume the sumach, hosed In Lincoln green, attended My lady of the elder, posed In blue-black jewels splendid.

And as we mounted up the hill The rocky path that stumbled Spread smooth; and all the day was still And odorous with umbled

Tops of wild-carrots drying gray; And there, soft-sunned before us, An orchard dwindling away With dappled boughs bent o'er us.

An orchard where the pippin fell Worm-bitten, bruised, and dusty; And hornet-stung, each like a bell, The Bartlett ripened rusty;

The smell of tawny peach and plum, That offered luscious yellow; Of wasp and bee the hidden hum, Made all the warm air mellow.

And on we went where many-hued Hung wild the morning-glory, Their blue balloons in shadows, dewed With frost-white dew-drops hoary;

In bush and burgrass far away Beneath us stretched the valley, Cleft by one creek that laughed with day And babbled musically.

The brown, the bronze, the gray, the red Of weed and briar ran riot Flush to dark woodland walls that led To nooks of whispering quiet.

Long, feathering bursts of golden-rod Ran golden woolly patches — Bloom-sunsets of the withered sod The dying summer catches.

Then o'er the hills, loose-tumbling rolled — O'erleaping expectation — The sunset, flaming marigold, A system's conflagration:

And homeward turning, she and I Went as one self in being — God met us in the earth and sky And Love had purged our seeing.