THE FOREST FOUNTAIN.

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BY IGNATIUS L. DONNELLY.

———

Here the sinking sun hath broken through a forest close as night;

Plashing all the deepened darkness with its thick and wine-like light.

Shivered lies the broad, red sunbeam slant athwart the withered leaf,

Laughing back the startled shadows from their high and holy grief;

Down yon dusk-pool, slant, obliquely, shoots a line like sparry splinter,

As the waking flush of spring-time lightens up the eyes in winter:

Dimming as it straineth downward melts the red light of the sun,

Darkling pool and piercing beamlet mingling whitely into one.

Fallen rays, like broken crystals, spangle thick the shadowy ground,

Ragged fragments, glorious gushes scattered richly, redly round.

Where the lazy lilies languish, one intruding sunbeam creeps;

In the arms of slumberous shadow, like a child it sinks and sleeps;

And the quiet leaves around it seem to think it all their own,

’Mid the grass and lightened lilies sleeping silent and alone.

Here the dew-damp lingers longest ’mid the plushy fountain moss;

Here the bergamot’s red blossom leans the stilly stream across;

Here the shade is darkly silent; here the breeze is liquid cool,

And the very air seems married to the freshness of that pool.

See, where down its depths pellucid, Nature’s purest waters well,

Breaking up in curving current, wimpled line and bubbly swell;

While in swift and noiseless beauty, through the deep and dewy grass,

O’er the rock and down the valley, see the hurrying waters pass.

Oh, how dreamy grow my senses, as I couch me ’mid the flowers,

Oh, how still the blue sky looketh, oh, how noteless creep the hours;

Oh, how wide the silence seemeth, not a sound disturbing comes,

Save a drowsy, sleepy buzzing, that around continuous hums;

And I seem to float out loosely on weak slumber’s languid breast,

With a kind of half reluctance that sinks gradually to rest.

Distant faces group around me, kindly eyes look in my own,

And I hear, though indistinctly, voices of the lost and gone:

His whose bark went down in tempest; his whose life and death were gloom;

His whose hopes and young ambitions fell and faded on the tomb;

Oh, again his earnest language breaks upon my dreaming ear,

And I catch the tones that waking I shall never, never hear.