The Pine Forest of the Cascine Near Pisa

Dearest, best and brightest,

Come away,

To the woods and to the fields!

Dearer than this fairest day

Which, like thee to those in sorrow,

Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow

To the rough Year just awake

In its cradle in the brake.

The eldest of the Hours of Spring,

Into the Winter wandering,

Looks upon the leafless wood,

And the banks all bare and rude;

Found, it seems, this halcyon Morn

In February's bosom born,

Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth,

Kissed the cold forehead of the Earth,

And smiled upon the silent sea,

And bade the frozen streams be free;

And waked to music all the fountains,

And breathed upon the rigid mountains,

And made the wintry world appear

Like one on whom thou smilest, Dear.

Radiant Sister of the Day,

Awake! arise! and come away!

To the wild woods and the plains,

To the pools where winter rains

Image all the roof of leaves,

Where the pine its garland weaves

Sapless, gray, and ivy dun

Round stems that never kiss the sun--

To the sandhills of the sea,

Where the earliest violets be.

Now the last day of many days,

All beautiful and bright as thou,

The loveliest and the last, is dead,

Rise, Memory, and write its praise!

And do thy wonted work and trace

The epitaph of glory fled;

For now the Earth has changed its face,

A frown is on the Heaven's brow.

We wandered to the Pine Forest

That skirts the Ocean's foam,

The lightest wind was in its nest,

The tempest in its home.

The whispering waves were half asleep,

The clouds were gone to play,

And on the woods, and on the deep

The smile of Heaven lay.

It seemed as if the day were one

Sent from beyond the skies,

Which shed to earth 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

With stems like serpents interlaced.

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.

It seemed that from the remotest seat

Of the white mountain's waste

To the bright flower beneath our feet,

A magic circle traced;--

A spirit interfused around,

A thinking, silent life;

To momentary peace it bound

Our mortal nature's strife;--

And still, it seemed, the centre of

The magic circle there,

Was one whose being filled with love

The breathless atmosphere.

Were not the crocuses that grew

Under that ilex-tree

As beautiful in scent and hue

As ever fed the bee?

We stood beneath the pools that lie

Under the forest bough,

And each seemed like a sky

Gulfed in a world below;

A purple firmament of light

Which in the dark earth lay,

More boundless than the depth of night,

And clearer than the day--

In which the massy forests grew

As in the upper air,

More perfect both in shape and hue

Than any waving there.

Like one beloved the scene had lent

To the dark water's breast

Its every leaf and lineament

With that clear truth expressed;

There lay far glades and neighbouring lawn,

And through the dark green crowd

The white sun twinkling like the dawn

Under a speckled cloud.

Sweet views, which in our world above

Can never well be seen,

Were imaged by the water's love

Of that fair forest green.

And all was interfused beneath

With an Elysian air,

An atmosphere without a breath,

A silence sleeping there.

Until a wandering wind crept by,

Like an unwelcome thought,

Which from my mind's too faithful eye

Blots thy bright image out.

For thou art good and dear and kind,

The forest ever green,

But less of peace in S--'s mind,

Than calm in waters, seen.