I love the beautiful green woodland,
Where shy singing-fairies flit;
In the twilight of their foodland
I hear a tapping while I sit,
And deem it is the woodpecker,
Yet know not other elfin noises
That waking near me softly stir,
While a shadowy bough faint poises,
Dreamily athwart the beryl
Of sensitive sun-lighted leaves;
And breathlessly, as in play-peril,
The laughing rillet swiftly cleaves
A way through trees and flowers who love him,
Waving green arms while he flows,
With touch light hindering above him,
As they would kiss him while he goes,
But he merrily from them flows,
Blessing the green twilit heart,
As erst to mine my little one would songful light impart!
Ah! now my fairy brook is dry;
Where are the playful gleamings of his eye,
Or songs of his sweet innocent revelry?
But while I love the gentle woodland,
And fragrant pines that stir and sing
Hushfully in upland valleys,
Blue lakes, and every living thing,
I love the little human children
Better than all woods and flowers,
The music of their innocent gambols
More than springs and summer showers.
And my heart is never lonely
If in roving I may meet
A few little children only
With their merrily flying feet,
In the playfield fresh from school,
Or among glades of woodland cool.
They are fair meanings of the daylight,
Clear fulfilment of meek flowers,
All a shyly wandering faylight
Would say among her leafy bowers.
In their sweet, shy, sidelong glances,
And every lisping word that wells,
In their light aerial dances,
As of wind-waved lily-bells …
I think I hear his very tone,
I feel his very living smile;
Yea, one would say he lends his own
To these fair children for a while.
Dear Father, these are very fair!
Lovely in all their ways,
Whose every breathing is a prayer,
And all their motion praise.
Then a gleam steals o'er the snow
Of my low-responding breast,
Even as a faint afterglow
Dawns in the ever-faded west.
And so God gives all babes to me,
In place of Baby who is gone;
Yet ah! the whole fair human family
Weighs lighter than my little one!