The Enchanted Marsh
O ripples in the marshland grass
Like waves on an enchanted sea,
The winds, with trailing garments pass
Invisible adown the lea
Each footprint, evanescent, pressed
In shadowed highlight, trough and crest.
No spray upon those waves is seen
To splash upon the marshy bank;
Uncanny sea so strangely green!
While lurking in those coverts dank
What things of the abyss may dwell
Only the fear hushed winds might tell.
Far off where dunes aspiring melt
Into the sky, those currents flow
In turmoil neither heard nor felt
How furtively they come and go!
Things yet undreamed of well might be
Submerged beneath so weird a sea.
No surges break but in our ear
An elfin murmuring seems to sound,
So vague it is we scarce may hear.
O can it be the far off pound
Of foamless surf on sands unseen
Beyond that shimmering waste of green?
And we who sail that eerie sea
Go drifting on a tide of dreams
To unknown isles in fantasy,
Borne on the undulating beams
Of sun, dim litten, or the moon
That cringes o’er the farthest dune.
How timelessly it ebbs and flows,
That sea of ever changing light,
And whence it bears us no one knows
To what wild chasms of the night
Where fancy, yearning to explore
Pauses, aghast, upon the shore.