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.