Happiness

IT was before the sunset that I turned
From where the late day burned,
And climbed the wide brown pasturelands that run
Along the hillside. There the warm weeds purr
For comfort of the sun.
Some secret in their look
Led me, until, struck through with love and awe,
I saw —
My Brook.
Glad hastener !
Though the high tide of clover was astir,
And blue-eyed flowers leaned across the grass
To see it pass,
And the long, rippled tresses
Of watercresses
Were misted with thin crystal, under stream, —
For more content
To small Suspected presences, agleam,
And then away ! — yet, ever diligent,
Untamed, soft fluttering,
The little creature went on rapturous wing,
Loyal and changeful, feathered, yet at rest,
On its own quest,
Subtle as light and simple as a nest.
It mused among the shaggy weeds and bubbled
In broken paths, untroubled;
With such a tongue to comfort and beseech,
It won the stones to speech !
Long time I listened, pondered, with love-looks,
The ways of brooks ;
When, feeling, half aware,
The benediction-touch upon my hair,
Of Something fair,
I turned from that wise water happy-voiced ;
And there,
Against the flush of waning afternoon,
Early, a dim moth-silver, poised
The Moon.

Josephine Preston Peabody.