THE HAPPY VALLEY. 
173 
The golden-belted bees hummed in the air, 
The tall, silk grasses bent and waved along; 
The trees slept in the sleeping sunbeam’s glare, 
The dreamy river chimed its undersong, 
And took its own free course without a care: 
Amid the boughs did lute-tongued songsters 
throng, 
And the green valley throbbed beneath their lays, 
While Echo Echo chased through many a leafy maze. 
Sweet shapes were there, the Spirits of the Flowers, 
Sent down to see the Summer-beauties dress, 
And feed their fragrant mouths with silver showers; 
Their eyes peeped out from many a green recess, 
And their fair forms made light the thick-set bowers; 
The very flowers seemed eager to caress 
Such living sisters; and the boughs, long-leafed, 
Clustered to catch the sighs their pearl-flushed 
bosoms heaved. 
One through her long loose hair was backward 
peeping, 
Or throwing, with raised arm, the locks aside; 
Another high a pile of flowers was heaping, 
Or looking love askance, and, when descried, 
Her coy glance on the bedded-greensward keeping; 
She pulled the flowers to pieces as she sighed, 
Then blushed like timid daybreak, when the dawn 
Looks crimson on the night, and then again’s with¬ 
drawn. 
