THE robin laughed in the orange-tree:
'Ho, windy North, a fig for thee:
While breasts are red and wings are bold
And green trees wave us globes of gold,
Time's scythe shall reap but bliss for me
- Sunlight, song, and the orange-tree.
'Burn, golden globes in leafy sky,
My orange-planets: crimson I
Will shine and shoot among the spheres
(Blithe meteor that no mortal fears)

And thrid the heavenly orange-tree
With orbits bright of minstrelsy.

If that I hate wild winter's spite
The gibbet trees, the world in white,
The sky but gray wind over a grave-
Why should I ache, the season's slave?

I'll sing from the top of the orange-tree
Gramercy, winter's tyranny.

'I'll south with the sun, and keep my clime;
My wing is king of the summer-time;
My breast to the sun his torch shall hold;
And I'll call down through the green and
gold

Time, take thy scythe, reap bliss for me,
Bestir thee under the orange-tree.'

The hickory told me manifold Fair tales of shade, the poplar tall Wrought me her shadowy self to hold, The chestnut, the oak, the walnut, the pine, Overleaning, with flickering meaning and sign,

Said, Pass not, so cold, these manifold

Deep shades of the hills of Habersham,
These glades in the valleys of Hall. 30
And oft in the hills of Habersham,
And oft in the valleys of Hall,

The white quartz shone, and the smooth brook-stone

Did bar me of passage with friendly brawl, And many a luminous jewel lone

- Crystals clear or a-cloud with mist, Ruby, garnet and amethyst

Made lures with the lights of streaming

As a silver-wrought garment that clings to and follows the firm sweet limbs of a girl. Vanishing, swerving, evermore curving again into sight,

Softly the sand-beach wavers away to a dim gray looping of light.

And what if behind me to westward the wall of the woods stands high?

The world lies east: how ample, the marsh and the sea and the sky!

A league and a league of marsh-grass, waisthigh, broad in the blade, Green, and all of a height,

and unflecked with a light or a shade, Stretch leisurely off, in a pleasant plain, To the terminal blue of the main.

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Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea?

Somehow my soul seems suddenly free From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin,

By the length and the breadth and the

sweep of the marshes of Glynn.

Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free

Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!

Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun,

Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won

God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain

And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain.

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