road of morn is dry,
Come daintier smells, linked in soft company,
Like velvet-slippered ladies pacing by.
Long muscadines,
Like Jove's locks curled round foreheads of great pines,
Breathe out ambrosial passion from their vines.
I pray with mosses, ferns and flowers shy
That hide like gentle nuns from human eye,
To lift adoring odors to the sky.
I hear faint bridal-sighs of blissful green,
Dying to kindred silences serene,
As dim lights melt into a pleasant sheen.
I start at fragmentary whispers, blown
From undertalks of leafy loves unknown,
Vague purports sweet, of inarticulate tone.

Dreaming of gods, men, nuns and brides, between
Old companies of oaks that inward lean
To join their radiant amplitudes of green,
I slowly move, with ranging looks that pass
Up from the matted miracles of grass
Into yon veined complex of space,
Where sky and leafage interlace
So close the heaven of blue is seen
Inwoven with a heaven of green.

I wander to the zigzag-cornered fence
Where sassafras, intrenched in brambles dense,
Contests with stolid vehemence
The march of culture, setting limb and thorn,
Like pikes, against the army of the corn.

There, while I pause, before mine eyes,
Out of the silent corn-ranks, rise
Inward dignities
And large benignities and insights wise,
Graces and modest majesties.
Thus, without tilth, I house a wondrous yield;
Thus, without theft, I reap another's field,
And store quintuple harvests in my heart concealed.

See, out of line a single corn-stem stands
Advanced beyond the foremost of his bands,
And waves his blades upon the very edge
And hottest thicket of the battling hedge.
Thou lustrous stalk, that canst nor walk nor talk,
Still dost thou type the poet-soul sublime
That leads the vanward of his timid time,
And sings up cowards with commanding rhyme--
Soul calm, like thee, yet fain, like thee, to grow
By double increment, above, below;
Soul homely, as thou art, yet rich in grace like thee,
Teaching the yeomen selfless chivalry,
That moves in gentle curves of courtesy;
Soul filled like thy long veins with sweetness tense,
By every godlike sense
Transmuted from the four wild elements.
Toward the empyrean
Thou reachest higher up than mortal man,
Yet ever piercest downward in the mould,