An Idyl

Upon a gnarly, knotty limb

That fought the current's crest,

Where shocks of reeds peeped o'er the brim,

Wild wasps had glued their nest.

And in a sprawling cypress' grot,

Sheltered and safe from flood,

Dirt-daubers each had chosen a spot

To shape his house of mud.

In a warm crevice of the bark

A basking scorpion clung,

With bright blue tail and red-rimmed eyes

And yellow, twinkling tongue.

A lunging trout flashed in the sun,

To do some petty slaughter,

And set the spiders all a-run

On little stilts of water.

Toward noon upon the swamp there stole

A deep, cathedral hush,

Save where, from sun-splocht bough and bole,

Sweet thrush replied to thrush.

An angler came to cast his fly

Beneath a baffling tree.

I smiled, when I had caught his eye,

And he smiled back at me.

When stretched beside a shady elm

I watched the dozy heat,

Nature was moving in her realm,

For I could hear her feet.