(A Sick-Bed Fancy)
An alley ran across the pleasant wood, On either side of whose broad opening stood Wide-armed green elms of many a year, great bowers Of perfect greenery in summer hours. A small red pathway slow meandered there Between two clumps of grapes, [both] lush and fair, Well grown, that brushed a tall man past the knee. No summer day grew therein over hot, For there was a pleasant freshness in the spot Brought thither by a stream that men might see Behind the rough-barked bole of every tree— A little stream that ever murmured on And here and there in sudden sunshine shone; But for the most part, swept by shadowy boughs, Among tall grass and fallen leaves did drowse, With ever and anon, a leap, a gleam, As some cross boulder lay athwart the stream.
Close following down this alley, one came near The place where it descended sudden, sheer, Into a dell betwixt two wooded hills, Where ran a river made of many rills. Near where to this the little alley stream Lapsed in a turmoil, stood as in a dream A lone, small mill-house in the vale aloof With orange mosses on a grey slate roof And all the walls and every lintel stone With water mosses cunningly o’ergrown. Its four-paned windows looked across a pool By shadow of the house and trees kept cool; Pent by the mossy weir that served the mill, Its little waters lay unmoved and still, Save for a circular, slow, eddy-wheeling That on its bubble-spotted breast kept stealing And now and then the sudden, short windsway Of some elm branch or beachen, that all day Trailed in the shadowed pool; but far below The enfranchised waters, in tumultuous flow, Splashed round the boulders and leapt on in foam Adown the sunshine way that led them home. There was no noise at all about the mill And the slope garden, like a dream, was still. There came no sound