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.