Sad skies and a foggy rain
Dripping from streaming eaves;
Over and over again
Dead drop of the trickling leaves;
And the woodward winding lane,
And the hill with its shocks of sheaves,
One scarce perceives.
Must I go in such sad weather
By the lane or over the hill?
Where the splitting milk-weed's feather
Dim, diamond-like rain-drops fill?
Or where, ten stars together,
Buff ox-eyes rank the rill
By the old corn-mill?
The creek by this is swollen,
And its foaming cascades sound;
And the lilies, smeared with pollen,
In the race look dull and drowned;—
‘ T is the path we oft have stolen
To the bridge, that rambles round
With willows crowned.
Through a bottom wild with berry
Or packed with the iron-weeds,
With their blue combs washed and very
Purple; the sorghum meads
Glint green near a wilding cherry;
Where the high wild-lettuce seeds
The fenced path leads.
A bird in the rain beseeches;
And the balsams’ budding balls
Smell drenched by the way which reaches
The wood where the water falls;
Where the warty water-beeches
Hang leaves one blister of galls,
The mill-wheel drawls.
My shawl instead of a bonnet!...
Though the wood be soaking yet
Through the wet to the rock I‘ ll run it —
How sweet to meet in the wet!—
Our rock with the vine upon it,
Each flower a fiery jet —...
He wo n't forget!